TRAGIC FRAGMENT. [In his nineteenth year Burns sketched the outlines of a tragedy; and the verses below are the only evidence remaining of that one attempt of his at dramatic composition. The five lines closing the soliloquy were added by him long after he had penned the fifteen by which they are preceded.] ALL devil as I am, a damnèd wretch, THE DEATH AND DYING WORDS THE AUTHOR'S ONLY PET YOWE. An Unco Mournfu' Tale. [Written at Lochlea, in 1782, before the poet's twenty-third year was completed. It is exceptionally interesting as the first specimen of that rare and fine humour, which, as entirely sui generis, Carlyle pronounced to be only best describable as "the humour of Burns." The Still my heart melts at human wretched-incident is commemorative of the all but strangu ness; lation of a favourite ewe, which was only released from the tether-line, when apparently at her last And with sincere, though unavailing gasp, by her owner, whose attention had been sighs, I view the helpless children of distress. sor Rejoicing in the honest man's destruction, crime. Even you, ye helpless crew, I pity you; Ye, whom the seeming good think sin to pity; Ye poor, despised, abandoned vagabonds, Whom vice, as usual, has turned o'er to ruin. opportunely called to the accident by certain Wi' glowrin' een, an' lifted han's, Oh, but for kind, though ill-requited He gaped wide, but naething spak! friends, I had been driven forth like you, forlorn, among you! At length poor Mailie silence brak. "O thou, whase lamentable face O injured God! Thy goodness has An' bear them to my master dear. endowed me With talents passing most of my com- "Tell him, if e'er again he keep peers, Which I in just proportion have abused, more. As muckle gear as buy a sheep, "Tell him, he was a master kin', “Oh, bid him save their harmless lives "Now, honest Hughoc, dinna fail This said, poor Mailie turn'd her head, POOR MAILIE'S ELEGY. "An' may they never learn the gaets LAMENT in rhyme, lament in prose, So wives will gi'e them bits o' bread, "My poor toop-lamb, my son an' heir, "An' niest my yowie, silly thing, Poor Mailie's dead! It's no the loss o' warl's gear, Through a' the toun she trotted by him; Than Mailie dead. I wat she was a sheep o' sense, Through thievish greed. "And now, my bairns, wi' my last Our bardie, lanely, keeps the spence breath, I lea'e my blessin' wi' you baith: An' when you think upo' your mither, Sin' Mailie's dead. Or, if he wanders up the howe, THEY took a plough and ploughed him They wasted, o'er a scorching flame, down, Put clods upon his head, An' they ha'e sworn a solemn oath John Barleycorn was dead. But the cheerful spring came kindly on, And showers began to fall; John Barleycorn got up again, And sore surprised them all. The marrow of his bones; But a miller used him worst of all, For he crushed him 'tween two stones. And they ha'e ta'en his very heart's blood, And drank it round and round; And still the more and more they drank, Their joy did more abound. [Written probably in 1781, when for six months together Burns resided at Irvine as a flax-dresser. We may judge so at least from an allusion of his to that episode in his career, where he says in his Autobiography: "Rhyme I had [then] given up, except some religious pieces which are in print,"-referring obviously to this and to the four effusions by which it is immediately followed. Elsewhere among his papers Burns, under date March, 1784-his father having died in the preceding month-entered the subjoined lines in his Common Place Book, with this sorrowful memorandum prefixed :-"There was a period of my life that my spirit was broken by repeated losses and disasters, which threatened, and indeed effected, the utter ruin of my fortune. My body, too, was attacked by that most dreadful distemper, a hypochondria, or confirmed melancholy. In this wretched state, the recollection of which makes me yet shudder, I hung my harp on the willow trees, except in some lucid intervals, in one of which I composed the following."] O THOU great Being! what Thou art A PRAYER IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH. [An entry, under the poet's hand, in his manuscript journal indicates, with painful distinctness, the circumstances out of which these verses sprang into existence. "A Prayer "-these are his words-"when fainting fits and other alarming symptoms of a pleurisy or some other dangerous disorder, which indeed still threatens me, first put nature on the alarm." Writing to his father in the December of 1781-the close of the very year in which these lines were penned at Irvine-Burns, in a letter expressive throughout of the greatest anguish of mind, indicates clearly enough the mood which in the subjoined verses found metrical expression :-"Sometimes, indeed, when for an hour or two my spirits are a little lightened, I glimmer a little into futurity; but my only pleasurable employment is looking backwards and forwards in a moral and religious way: I am quite transported at the thought that ere long, perhaps very soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu to all the pains and disquietudes of this weary life."] O THOU unknown, Almighty Cause O Thou, great Governor of all below! If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee, Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, Or still the tumult of the raging sea; With that controlling power assist e'en me, Those headlong furious passions to confine; For all unfit I feel my powers to be, To rule their torrent in th' allowèd line; WHY am I loth to leave this earthly Oh, aid me with thy help, Omnipotence |