Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 1947. BURNS : POET AND PHILOSOPHER

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 88, 31 January 1947, Page 4

Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 1947. BURNS : POET AND PHILOSOPHER

COMPLIMENTARY to the Whakatane Caledonian Society, and the passing of the traditional 'Burns ni'cht' earlier in the week we publish this tribute to Scotlands national poet, and beloved world figure Robert Burns. "Why do the Scots keep alive and evergreen the memory of Robert Burns? Was not his life 'perfectly awful'!" Even the most ardent admirer of the "whimsical mortal" will admit that Burns was no plaster saint. He lived intensely throughout his brief seven years, often unwisely, but always with scrupulous honesty. He was no hypocrite and made no pretence to defend or excuse his own faults. In him there is nothing exaggerated or strained, nothing put on or affected. He rhymed for fun—to please himself, to delight some member of "the adorable half of the human species," to right a wrong, but never would he mix his native gift with the money motive. Burns had his faults, but like Whittier we might say, "Let those who never erred forget his worth, in vain bewailings; Sweet Soul of Song!" ... I owe my debt uncancelled by his failings!" No great poet has so completely and effectivelywritten his life into his poems as has Rob the Ranter. One does not have to dip deeply into his works to realise that they portray his life story in all its ruggedness, and unveil the life of the people of his day. Perhaps this is why Burns has captured life, in all its varied shades, more vividly than has any poet, and excelled all in his simplicity, intense sallies of wit, inimitable expression of passion and sorrow, and rare insight into his human heart. A little before he reached his sixteenth year Burns said "he first committed the sin of Thyme" when inspired by his harvest partner, "a bonnie, sweet, sonsie, lass" a year younger than himself. He celebrated her charms in the little ballad, "O, Once I Lov'd a Bonnie Lass." Toil and Home Life However, his chief occupations until he reached the age of twenty-three were love, toil and trifling, although he had, to use his own words, come "to be known in the neighbourhood as a maker of rhymes. About this time he wrote "The Twa Herds" and "Holy Willie's Prayer," two scathing satires on the savage conflict raging in the local Kirk between the Old and the New Lights—and, remembering his own humiliating experience on the Stool of Repentance, was filled with glee at the ridiculousness of the quarreling ministers. Burns' early home life is found in his next poem, "The Cotter's Saturday Night"—a poem utterly and totally different from anything he had ever done; a poem he would never try to repeat; a poem descriptive of rural life in its simplicity and dignity; of rural manners and virtues; a poem inspired by the family worship that happened in his father's home, as it was happening in thousands of humble homes all over Scotland when night after night the father, weary from the eternal struggle with the soil, returned to his family, weary, but not so weary that he forgot his God. The next few years were fruitful ones for the Ayrshire Plough-boy—-poem and song poured effortlessly from his lips. He composed as he hoed thistles from the potato rows, guided the plough over infertile fields, caroused in the local inns, or made love to the country girls. The nest of a field-mouse turned over by his plough provided the inspiration for that lovely poem of pity, "To a Mouse"; "Wee, sleekit, cow-rin', tim-rous beastie . . ." and as he stabled the horses the same evening he recited to his brother the exquisite lines. "To Mary in Heaven," the most pathetic of his songs, was dashed off after he had spent the night of the anniversary of her death in the shelter of some corn-stacks, lying on his back contemplating—" Thou lingering star, with lessening ray, That lov'st to greet the early morn . . ." as the approaching dawn wiped out the stars one by one from the firmament. More remarkable still is the poet's first tale in verse, "Tarn O' Shanter" a- matchelss epic—Burns' masterpiece. , This marvellous poem, 224 lines in length, was written in a single day as he wandered by the winding river Nith. His propensity for rhymes is unrivalled and contrasts vividly with the tremendous and sustained energy expended by some poets on a single composition —"Elegy in a Country Churchyard" for example, on which Thomas Gray spent over seven years. Cause of the Common Man Burns—a peasant and man of the people—proud of his common humanity, was stirred by the events abroad. In America men had won a grand new freedom under Washington. In France the fall of the Bastille—autocrats and despots were out of fashion. The cries of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity!" echoed round the world. They reached the sensitive ears of Burns, whose passionate and rebellious spirit was ever ranged against wrong. "The rantin' dog" was roused. The people of Scotland had no rights. There were the nobility who went magnificently free, heedless of Kirk or law—and the rabble, men and women who salved and sweated and died in their thousands, diseased, starved, hated. The Poet of the People fought with everything in his power for the rights of man, for a juster and more joyful life. He challenged place and prestige, the artificial ribands, stars and titles. He praised the honest man, the pith o' sense, the pride o' worth, and unfolded a vision of emancipated Common Man for a groping humanity. "What tho' on namely fare we dine, ■ Wear hodden-gray and a' that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, A man's a man for a' that. \ For a' that, and a' that, v Their tinsel show, and a' that; The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, Is King o' men for a' that." "I care not," said the German, poet Heine, "that man lay a laurel-wreath on my tomb, but lay a sword there, for I was a-.gr&at soldier in the Liberation War of Humanity." Not only Scots, but the whole of mankind might well lay both the laurel-wreath and the sword on the tomb of Robert Burns, for he, to, has been a singer and soldier, in the Liberation War of Humanity.