No More Learning

Yes, freely let our hearts expand, 25
Freely as in youth's season bland,
When side by side, his Book in hand,
We wont to stray,
Our pleasure varying at command
Of each sweet Lay. 30

How oft inspired must he have trod
These pathways, yon far-stretching road!
There lurks his home; in that Abode,
With mirth elate,
Or in his nobly-pensive mood, 35
The Rustic sate.

Proud thoughts that Image overawes,
Before it humbly let us pause,
And ask of Nature, from what cause
And by what rules 40
She trained her Burns to win applause
That shames the Schools.

Through busiest street and loneliest glen
Are felt the flashes of his pen;
He rules mid winter snows, and when 45
Bees fill their hives;
Deep in the general heart of men
His power survives.

What need of fields in some far clime
Where Heroes, Sages, Bards sublime, 50
And all that fetched the flowing rhyme
From genuine springs,
Shall dwell together till old Time
Folds up his wings?

Sweet Mercy! to the gates of Heaven 55
This Minstrel lead, his sins forgiven;
The rueful conflict, the heart riven
With vain endeavour,
And memory of Earth's bitter leaven,
Effaced for ever. 60

But why to Him confine the prayer,
When kindred thoughts and yearnings bear
On the frail heart the purest share
With all that live? --
The best of what we do and are, 65
Just God, forgive!


* * * * *

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A: Though "suggested" on "the day following," these stanzas
were not written then; but "many years after. " They must, however, find
a place in the "Memorials" of this 1803 Tour in Scotland. --Ed. ]


[Footnote B: Burns's poem, thus named. --Ed.
]



See the note to the previous poem. The line

'These pathways, yon far-stretching road! '

refers probably to the road to Brownhill, past Ellisland farmhouse
where Burns lived. "The day following" would be Aug. 19th,
1803. The extract which follows from the Journal is a further
illustration of the poem. August 8th.

". . . Travelled through the vale of Nith, here little like a vale, it
is so broad, with irregular hills rising up on each side, in outline
resembling the old-fashioned valances of a bed. There is a great deal
of arable land; the corn ripe; trees here and there--plantations,
clumps, coppices, a newness in everything. So much of the gorse and
broom rooted out that you wonder why it is not all gone, and yet there
seems to be almost as much gorse and broom as corn; and they grow one
among another you know not how. Crossed the Nith; the vale becomes
narrow, and very pleasant; cornfields, green hills, clay cottages; the
river's bed rocky, with woody banks. Left the Nith about a mile and a
half, and reached Brownhill, a lonely inn, where we slept. The view
from the windows was pleasing, though some travellers might have been
disposed to quarrel with it for its general nakedness; yet there was
abundance of corn.