Robert Burns: A Memoir

Front Cover
Routledge, Warnes, and Routledge, 1859 - 100 pages

From inside the book

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 65 - Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone ; The flowers appear on the earth ; The time of the singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land ; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
Page 52 - An' getting fou and unco happy, We think na on the lang Scots miles, The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles, That lie between us and our hame, Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame, Gathering her brows like gathering storm, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. This truth fand honest Tam o...
Page 95 - The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace, The big ha'bible, ance his father's pride: His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare; Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He wales a portion with judicious care; And "Let us worship God!
Page 96 - The priest-like father reads the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on high ; Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny ; Or, how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire ; Or, Job's pathetic plaint and wailing cry ; Or, rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire ; Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.
Page 97 - While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere. Compar'd with this, how poor Religion's pride, In all the pomp of method, and of art, When men display to congregations wide, Devotion's ev'ry grace, except the heart!
Page 93 - An' makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil. Belyve the elder bairns come drapping in, At service out, amang the farmers roun', Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin A cannie errand to a neebor town : Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown, In youthfu...
Page 93 - At length his lonely cot appears in view, Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ; Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through To meet their dad, wi' flichterin noise an' glee. His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonnily, His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifie's smile, The lisping infant prattling on his knee, Does a' his weary carking cares beguile, An' makes him quite forget his labour an
Page 94 - O happy love, — where love like this is found! — O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare! I've paced much this weary mortal round, And sage experience bids me this declare — " If heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare, One cordial in this melancholy vale, 'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair, In other's arms breathe out the tender tale, Beneath the milk- white thorn that scents the evening gale.
Page 93 - But hark! a rap comes gently to the door; Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same, Tells how a neibor lad cam o'er the moor, To do some errands, and convoy her hame. The wily mother sees the conscious flame Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek; Wi...
Page 92 - No mercenary bard his homage pays; With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end: My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise: To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene; The native feelings strong, the guileless ways; What Aikin in a cottage would have been; Ah ! tho' his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween! November chill blaws loud wi...

Bibliographic information