Robert Burns Poems: A Gloss for On Caring | The Project
In 2019, I set about memorizing my favorite poems by Robert Burns, chosen because of my family culture and my own interests. The poems cover most all the years that Burns wrote poetry, and provide a sampling that, for me, shows his development as a poet, the range of his abilities and interests, his representation of Scotland, and his insightful intelligence about humanity and the world. Though not a true Burns scholar, I want to discuss the poems as I see them, what they mean to me, what I admire about them, and why I chose them to learn by heart.
A Poem of Close Observation: “To a Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet, at Church,” 1786, was marked by my father in his favorite Burns volume, and he often read it at the dinner table, mostly for the great lines, O wad some Power the giftie gie us/ to see oursels as ithers see us. The poem was supposedly written the night the incident occurred; certainly, it shows Burns’ ability to render his observations significant, and even profound. Ladies and lice are odd companions, perhaps, though Burns once wrote in an epigram addressed to a man at table who constantly bragged about the company he kept: What of lords with whom you’ve supped,/ And of dukes that you dined with yestreen!/ A louse, sir, is still but a louse/ Though it crawl on the locks of a queen. So, the louse is an equalizer, an ever-present reminder of our humanity no matter our “airs.”
“To a Louse” addresses this loathsome creature through six of its eight stanzas. The first three stanzas are full of gleeful name calling: crowlin ferlie; uglie, creepin, blastit wonner. The fourth, fifth and sixth turn slightly, toward what seems near admiration for the louse’s bold climb: Na, faith ye yet! ye’ll no be right,/ Till ye’ve got on it-/ The verra tapmost, tow’rin height/ O’ Miss’ bonnet. And, My sooth! Right bauld ye set your nose out,/ As plump an’ grey as ony groset. And, Miss’ fine Lunardi! Fye!/ How daur ye do’t?
This last of the sixth stanza marks another turn in the poem. Burns moves from the Lady’s Bonnet and Sae fine a lady?, to Miss’ bonnet and Miss’ fine Lunardi. In the next stanza, this lady, turned Miss, becomes Jenny, showing, I suppose that the louse has equalized the young woman. She’s shed her titles to become the young woman everyone in church knows by her common name. She is now the one addressed by the narrator of the poem, rather than the louse. And then, for the powerful ending stanza, we as audience are addressed, and asked to give up our airs in dress and gait, An’ ev’n devotion!
Two poems about relationships: “John Anderson, My Jo,” 1789, was another of my father’s favorites. Jo is the Scottish dialect for sweetheart, lover, dear, or darling, coming from an original meaning of “joy.” My brother Tim and his wife chose it as their first daughter’s middle name. Like “Auld Lang Syne,” which translates “old long since,” “John Anderson, My Jo” is a poem of abiding acquaintance. It celebrates the love of years together rather than of years spent apart: But now your brow is beld, John,/ Your locks are like the snow;/ But blessings on your frosty pow.
The traditional stanzas of this song, still well-known in Scotland, were quite different, a lament of a young wife about her husband’s aging body and impotence. Some lines: John Anderson my jo John/ When first that you began/ You had as good a tail-tree/ As any other man,/ But now it's waxen wan John/ And wrinkles to and fro/ And oft requires my helping hand/ John Anderson my jo. Burns, newly married to Jean Armour, turned away from the traditional lyrics to write a honeymoon song about equals in their aging and tenderness, a wife’s appreciation instead of complaint.
Each of the two stanzas begins with John Anderson, my jo, John, and ends with John Anderson, my jo. Either John or jo appears in the poem 13 times in the 16 lines, in an unrestrained refrain of affection. These two have clamb the hill thegither, words simple and deep enough that the parents of Sue Holm, a friend raised in a Scottish household, had them etched into their tombstone. The ending finality is touchingly rendered, so realistically loving and accepting: Now we maun totter down, John,/ And hand in hand we’ll go,/ And sleep thegither at the foot,/ John Anderson, my jo. I think that the words, and sleep thegither at the foot, to be tombstone-worthy, as well. The simplicity and sincerity of the poem, with all the repetition, makes it one of my favorites to recite.
“O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast,” 1796, was written the year of Burns’ death, and is a true expression of mature devotion. The poem was written as lyrics to the favorite song of Jessie Lewars, the sister of a colleague, who helped nurse the ailing Burns, who helped care for Jean Armour during a difficult pregnancy, and who took care of the Burns children even after his death. Burns had Jessie sing the song and then he created new stanzas in Lewars’ honor.
The repetitions in the poem, in the second and fourth lines of each stanza have a double sense of reinforcement and of fading away, or perhaps I’m reading that into the poem knowing that it is one of the last written by Burns. Either reading contains the power of declaration, acceptance, and letting go. The repeated lines are: On yonder lea, on yonder lea; I’d shelter thee, I’d shelter three; Around thee blaw, around thee blaw; To share it a’, to share it a’; Sae black and bare, sae black and bare; If thou wert there, if thou wert there; Wi’ thee to reign, wi’ thee to reign; Wad be my Queen, wad be my Queen. The words thee and thou make the poem seem formal, almost liturgical, giving force to what is mutual care and love in its highest sense. Perhaps this is a high note for Burns to end his life with, given his reputation for many other kinds of caring and love. This is what we all want, shield and sharing in time of need: Thy bield should be my bosom,/ To share it a’, to share it a’.
I was in the process of memorizing this poem as my wife and I traveled during Thanksgiving of 2019 to visit our daughter in Bennington, Vermont, and my brother Tim in Beverly, Massachusetts. We had the usual incredibly prepared dinner at the hands of Tim’s wife, Lauren. But she was shaky, unsteady, she said, and the next day went to the Emergency Room. She was diagnosed with a tumor on her brainstem. Since the brainstem controls many of the subconscious body functions—heart rate, breathing, balance, sleep cycle, swallowing—her condition was quite serious. She came home before we had to return home, and I had the chance to recite “Oh Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast” to her. I hadn’t known it to be a poem so appropriate to her condition, but the four stanzas progress from shelter, to sharing, to comfort, to exaltation/reverence. I choked up reciting the poem, though I did not know then that Lauren would die just over a month later, on December 27. I cannot think of the poem, cannot say the poem, without the memory of Lauren at the table, sharing and sheltering and comforting us, even as she was being exalted and revered. And then I think, too, of my brother Tim, who now has no wife to shelter, to share with, to ameliorate the “wildest waste” of being a widower, nor to make his “brightest jewel,” as he always did with Lauren.
Our relationships to Nature: “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough, November 1785” is one of the best-known and best-loved of Burns, because of the best laid line that includes the words John Steinbeck uses as title, Of Mice and Men. My father read it often at the table, and was fond of that line, The best laid schemes o’ Mice and Men/ Gang aft agley, though he mis-wrote it in a Scotland journal as “best laid plans.” I’m struck by how often Burns emphasizes the smallness of the mouse. The poem begins with the word Wee, and in the third stanza Burns comments on how little the mouse needs in order to eat: A daiman-icker in a thrave/ ‘S a sma’ request. The next stanza is about the mouse’s home: Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin! And a couple of stanzas later, That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble. The forces surrounding the mouse are large: An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,/ Baith snell an’keen!; and weary winter comin fast; and winter’s sleety dribble,/ An’ cranreuch cauld! Burns is giant, as well, with his cruel coulter that destroys the mouse nest, but he also has giant human woes. In fact, my favorite stanza is the last, where Burns shows such insight into the human condition, the curse that comes with our awareness of our lives as lived in the past and future as well as the present: Still thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!/ The present only toucheth thee:/ But Och! I backward cast my e’e,/ On prospects drear!/ An’ forward tho’ I canna see,/ I guess an’ fear! Someone once told me that to explicate Burns, one just says the obvious, that he says what he means, and so well. But sometimes his “so well” is the very best, and is poetry at its very best, explicating the heart of humanity.
Politics and Democracy: A Man’s A Man for a’ That,” 1795, was important to my father as an expression of Burns’ egalitarianism, so much that the poem, framed, hung in our family room. Burns was influenced, when writing his republican anthem to the tune of an older song (“For a’ that”), by Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man (1791-92). In a letter, Burns called his lyrics “two or three pretty good prose thoughts, inverted into rhyme.” The publisher of many of Burns’ songs, George Thomson, fearing controversy, did not put the poem into print until 1805, though several magazines published it before Burns’ death, and it became well-known and popular in Scotland.
The poem emphasizes the humility, simplicity, and dignity of the common person, just as Burns does in poems like “A Cotter’s Saturday Night,” with such phrases as: Honest poverty; The man’s the gowd [gold]; The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,/ Is King; The man o’ independent mind; Gude faith; The pith o’ sense and pride o’ worth/ Are higher rank; Sense and Worth o’er all the earth,/ Shall bear the gree. This in contrast to rank, to coward slaves, to the guinea’s stamp, to silks and wines, to yon birkie ca’d a lord with His ribband star an’ a’ that. All ending with hope: It’s comin’ yet for a’ that,/ That Man to Man, the world o’er,/ Shall brothers be for a’ that. “A Man’s a Man” is a sterling republican anthem at a time when such thoughts were being expressed by political philosophers, revolutionaries and poets around the world. But more than that, being a poem composed just the year before his death, the poem expresses, at least for me, another sentiment echoed and amplified all through the poetry of Robert Burns, that “Scotland is Scotland, for a’ that!” Independent mind, hamely fare, the honest man, the pith o’ sense and pride o’ worth, and gude faith—these are the same things celebrated in so many clear, direct lines that celebrate all things Scottish: haggis, Scotch drink, honest religion, hard work, simplicity in life and art. Burns helped to create that sense of a rugged Scotland, without “airs.” He helped Scotland to see itself as others see it, and to take pride in that. Perhaps that’s why he knew his poetry would survive him in exactly the way it has.