Poems (Proctor)/Robert Burns

by Edna Dean Proctor

ROBERT BURNS. (Written for the Burns Centennial, Jan. 25, 1859, and reprinted at the request of friends in Scotland.)

When the frost had killed the daisies
 And the hills were white with snow,
Robert Burns was born in Ayrshire
 Just a hundred years ago.
Cold about the cottage ingle
 When the cloudy night fell down,
Blew the wind from off the moorlands
 Where the heath was crisp and brown
But the boy was summer's darling,
 Made of music, love, and fire,
And the winter could not harm him,
 Let it wreak its utmost ire.
Now a hundred years are numbered,
 Yet we hail the happy morn
When, amid the Ayrshire snow-wreaths,
 Robert Burns, the man, was born!
And King of Hearts he reigns to-day,
 While the noble throng around him,
God be praised that a man has sway
 And the wide world's love has crowned him!
With his head upon her bosom
 In the firelight's ruddy glow,
Plaintive songs his mother sang him,—
 Airs of Scotland long ago;
And he thrilled at tales of heroes,
 Or of ghosts and warlocks grim,
Till he felt a chilly horror
 Creeping over every limb,
And he shuddered as the tempest
 Shook the window with its moan,
Lest the sobbing and the sighing
 Were a murdered victim's groan;—
Now his name is linked with story;
 Now his life is set to song;
All that Scotland has of glory
 Floats with Robert Burns along!

So the boy grew older, loving
 Every wild and winsome thing
From the rush of stormy waters
 To the lark upon the wing;
He a lark, too, warbling upward
 From the heather's purple guise,
Finding sweetest inspiration
 In the light of woman's eyes.
Dante shrined his Beatrice,
 Laura lives in Petrarch's rhyme,—
Tenderer praise have Scottish maidens
 Down through all the coming time!
Every woman loves the singer
 From the peasant to the queen,
For the sake of "Highland Mary,"
 For the sake of "Bonny Jean."

How he longed for better knowledge,
 How he yearned for noble fame,
He, the ploughman, the unlettered,
 Born to bear a humble name;—
(O my Poet! thou didst cast it
 In the furrow of the years
That "A man's a man for a' that,"
 Thou didst water it with tears;
Now the harvest time is coming,
 Now the fields are white with grain,
Thou, the sower, art the reaper,
 Binding sheaves on every plain!)
Ah! the human soul is deeper
 Than the lore he never knew,
So the lays he sung shall echo
 All the listening ages through.

Tell us not of mighty princes
 Ruling proud o'er shores and seas;
Robert Burns has kingdom grander
 Than the stateliest of these!
Theirs by mountain chains is bounded
 Or a river's winding line;
His sweeps broad from tropic palm-trees
 To the farthest polar pine!
Scotland (as a gem she wears it,)
 Dowered with song his lowly birth,
And at last his meed, immortal,
 Is the homage of the earth.
Pardon sins he sorrowed over,
 He who light on daisies trod;
Say, "He was of man the lover,"—
 Leave him to the love of God!

Slow, but surely, comes the morning;
 Lo! the east is flushed with rose,
And the wind so chill at dawning
 With a warmer current blows.
Truth at last shall be the victor
 Bearing Freedom in its van,
While the watchword on its banner
 Is "The Brotherhood of Man."
Thrones and crowns and jeweled sceptres
 Like forgotten toys will be;
Only he who loves his fellows
 Shall the heights of honor see.
Then, recounting lives of heroes,
 As their memory backward turns,
Truest Prophet, sweetest Singer,
 Men shall reckon Robert Burns!
And King of Hearts he'll reign that day
 While the noble throng around him;—
God be praised that a man has sway
 And the wide world's love has crowned him!