Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/73

 LOVE IN HINDU LITERATURE. 59

Bahadur, the Sikh martyr of mediaeval India, might have uttered these very words. " Macpherson's Fare- well " is really the farewell of the Macphersons of all mankind.

Burns is a mystic because he sings of infinite bliss, of eternal sunshine, of the "light that never was on sea or land," of perpetual Phalgunn, of a new world of bursting vital life. His were the cry of the poor and the cry of the slave. He is one of the world's first socialists. In the "Highland Widow's Lament" we have a deeper sense of humanity, a widening of the world's horizon, and a reverence for human passion and charac- ter, which can be experienced only on imagination's wings, as an " ethereal minstrel," and not from the con- vention-rooted platform of this lowly ground. A vision from that height is the vision of a mystic.

"I was the happiest of a'the clan, Sair, sair may I repine ; For Donald was the bravest man And Donald he was mine. Till Charlie Stewart came at last, Sae far to set us free ; My Donald's arm was wanted then For Scotland and for me. » Their woefu' fate what need I tell. Right to the wrang did yield : My Donald and his country fell Upon Culloden field."

Burns is a mystic, because he lives on the furthest verge of emotions. His life in intense, he is an extremist. And from that extreme of world's horizon he catches a glimpse of the unknown, the hereafter, and the twilight