Oppressed with grief, oppressed with care, A burden more than I can bear, I sit me down and sigh: O life! thou art a galling load, Along a rough, a weary road, To wretches such as I! Dim, backward, as I cast my view, What sick’ning scenes appear!— What sorrows yet may pierce me through, Too justly, I may fear! Still caring, despairing, Must be my bitter doom; My woes here, shall close ne’er, But with the closing tomb.
See this again, in the affection with which he loved the sombre phases of external nature, and the force with which he painted them. Thus he meditates in Winter:
The sweeping blast—the sky o’ercast— The joyless winter-day, Let others fear, to me more dear Than all the pride of May: The tempest’s howl, it soothes my soul, My griefs it seems to join; The leafless trees my fancy please— Their fate resembles mine.
Then passing from this low-breathing despondency, we have lyric tragedy shouting down despair in a kind of reckless ecstacy. Bold and brave is this “Song of Death:”
Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth, and ye skies, Now gay with the bright setting sun; Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear tender ties, Our race of existence is run. Thou grim King of Terrors—thou life’s gloomy foe— Go, frighten the coward and slave; Go, teach _them_ to tremble, fell tyrant! but know, No terrors hast thou to the brave!
In the pathos of love Burns has no superior. What poet in ancient or modern times, short of Shakspeare, has sung with more varied inspiration than Burns, the agitations with which love convulses the heart of man, and breaks the heart of woman? In a few compressed, but simple-meaning lines, he reveals the passion in all its regrets and agony. And here also, we can see the force, the simplicity—the vehement sincerity of his poetry: and we can see exactly the same characteristics in his life. Allan Cunningham, in his biography of Burns, tells a very affecting anecdote, which I may here fairly adduce in illustration. Jean Armor was lying ill in the house of her parents. Burns had arranged to quit the country for ever, but wanted, once before he left, to see his Jean. Burns attempted to go into the house, but her father stood in the door to exclude him. Burns, maddened by his grief, pushed the old man aside, rushed up to his daughter’s chamber, and throwing himself across the bed, wept as if his heart would burst. And, with regard to his verses to “Mary in Heaven,” if any thing could be more pathetic, than the verses themselves, it was the circumstances in which he composed them. It is now familiar to all who read the least of literary history, that this sublimely pathetic ode, was composed on the anniversary of the maiden’s death, while the poet lay abroad in the field during a bright harvest night, recalling the images of past affections, and out from this dream of the wakeful and troubled heart came that dirge of music which the noblest humanity inspired, and which the rudest humanity must love. It is so familiar to every one, that I will not dare to profane it, by repetition. But here are a few lines of a song, lyrical with all the melody of sadness.