No More Learning

TO MARY CAMPBELL.

["In my very early years," says Burns to Thomson "when I was thinking
of going to the West Indies, I took the following farewell of a dear
girl. You must know that all my earlier love-songs were the breathings
of ardent passion, and though it might have been easy in after times
to have given them a polish, yet that polish, to me, would have
defaced the legend of my heart, so faithfully inscribed on them.
Their uncouth simplicity was, as they say of wines, their race. " The
heroine of this early composition was Highland Mary. ]


I.

Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary,
And leave old Scotia's shore?
Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary,
Across th' Atlantic's roar?

II.

O sweet grows the lime and the orange,
And the apple on the pine;
But a' the charms o' the Indies
Can never equal thine.

III.

I hae sworn by the Heavens to my Mary,
I hae sworn by the Heavens to be true;
And sae may the Heavens forget me
When I forget my vow!

IV.

O plight me your faith, my Mary,
And plight me your lily white hand;
O plight me your faith, my Mary,
Before I leave Scotia's strand.

V.
We hae plighted our troth, my Mary,
In mutual affection to join;
And curst be the cause that shall part us!
The hour and the moment o' time!

* * * * *




CLXXX.

THE WINSOME WEE THING.

[These words were written for Thomson: or rather made extempore. "I
might give you something more profound," says the poet, "yet it might
not suit the light-horse gallop of the air, so well as this random
clink. "]


I.

She is a winsome wee thing,
She is a handsome wee thing,
She is a bonnie wee thing,
This sweet wee wife o' mine.

II.

I never saw a fairer,
I never lo'ed a dearer;
And niest my heart I'll wear her,
For fear my jewel tine.

III.

She is a winsome wee thing,
She is a handsome wee thing,
She is a bonnie wee thing,
This sweet wee wife o' mine.

IV.

The warld's wrack we share o't,
The warstle and the care o't;
Wi' her I'll blythely bear it,
And think my lot divine.

* * * * *




CLXXXI.

BONNIE LESLEY.