No More Learning

* * * * *




LXVIII.

JESSY LEWARS.

[Written on the blank side of a list of wild beasts, exhibiting in
Dumfries. "Now," said the poet, who was then very ill, "it is fit to
be presented to a lady. "]


Talk not to me of savages
From Afric's burning sun,
No savage e'er could rend my heart
As, Jessy, thou hast done.
But Jessy's lovely hand in mine,
A mutual faith to plight,
Not even to view the heavenly choir
Would be so blest a sight.

* * * * *




LXIX.

THE TOAST.

[One day, when Burns was ill and seemed in slumber, he observed Jessy
Lewars moving about the house with a light step lest she should
disturb him. He took a crystal goblet containing wine-and-water for
moistening his lips, wrote these words upon it with a diamond, and
presented it to her. ]


Fill me with the rosy-wine,
Call a toast--a toast divine;
Give the Poet's darling flame,
Lovely Jessy be the name;
Then thou mayest freely boast,
Thou hast given a peerless toast.

* * * * *




LXX.

ON MISS JESSY LEWARS.

[The constancy of her attendance on the poet's sick-bed and anxiety of
mind brought a slight illness upon Jessy Lewars. "You must not die
yet," said the poet: "give me that goblet, and I shall prepare you for
the worst.
" He traced these lines with his diamond, and said, "That
will be a companion to 'The Toast. '"]


Say, sages, what's the charm on earth
Can turn Death's dart aside?
It is not purity and worth,
Else Jessy had not died.

R. B.

* * * * *




LXXI.

ON THE

RECOVERY OF JESSY LEWARS.

[A little repose brought health to the young lady. "I knew you would
not die," observed the poet, with a smile: "there is a poetic reason
for your recovery;" he wrote, and with a feeble hand, the following
lines. ]


But rarely seen since Nature's birth,
The natives of the sky;
Yet still one seraph's left on earth,
For Jessy did not die.

R. B.

* * * * *




LXXII.

TAM, THE CHAPMAN.

[Tam, the chapman, is said by the late William Cobbett, who knew him,
to have been a Thomas Kennedy, a native of Ayrshire, agent to a
mercantile house in the west of Scotland. Sir Harris Nicolas confounds
him with the Kennedy to whom Burns addressed several letters and
verses, which I printed in my edition of the poet in 1834: it is
perhaps enough to say that the name of the one was Thomas and the name
of the other John.