Letitia Landon in Pictorial Album; or, Cabinet of Paintings for the year 1837/Burns and his Highland Mary
BURNS AND HIS HIGHLAND MARY.
Summer, sweet summer, calls form earth
All that had in her bosom slept,
Of green delight or rosy birth,
While winter raved, or soft spring wept.
But now the yellow August yields
The glories of a summer morn;
The corn is smiling in the fields,
The flowers are smiling in the corn.
A fairy armoury, there stand
The spears Titania's knights might bear;
And, banners for an elfin band,
The crimson corn-flowers light the air.
All things are cheerful; o'er the hills
Rich woods extend their wealth along;
And music from the hidden rills
Comes like a universal song.
The reapers are upon the plain,
The gleaming sickle cuts its way,
The startled birds forsake the grain,
And seek the green wood’s sheltered day.
Two, with the ripe corn falling near,
Are knelt a little way apart,
Alone, each only asks to hear
The beating of the other's heart.
Ah, happy! nothing life can bring
Brings back that first sweet hour again,
When Love awakened Hope to fling
Hues,—lovely, fugitive,—and vain!
Touched with the light of other spheres,
A light how pure and tremulous,
The girl's soft eyes are filled with tears
Too lovely for our earth and us.
But he is joyous, for his mind
Flings round its native element;—
Lofty, impassioned, unconfined,
Genius and Love are confident:
Both conscious of their native heaven,
Not of the earth which they must tread,
Till Genius wastes its starry leven,
And Love droops down his radiant head.
She is the fortunate—to die
So young, so sinless, and so fair;
The bitter pang, the heavy sigh,
Is what the early grave will spare.
The ground is haunted where they kneel,
For He is of earth's gifted few;
Whose love a thousand others feel,
Whose grief bids others sorrow too.
It is a glorious thing to be
A poet—loved, and yet alone;
To dream of immortality;
To wake, and find it is your own.
To know that to the sorrowing heart
Your words are language and relief;
Of hope, of joy, of triumph part—
The breath of love—the wail of grief.
Oh! mockery,—the poet's name
Is dearly bought, by wretched years;
He finds the golden haze of fame
An April sunshine, made of tears.
What was his fate—who kneeling there,
Asks only of the sun above
To shine upon his Mary's hair,
And witness to his truth and love?
The grave closed o'er that lovely face,
Yet lovely to so many eyes,
Where winds the clear Ayr’s sunny trace
Beneath the summer's saddened skies.
And he who gave the scene its spell,
What was in after life his doom?
The poet's usual chronicle,
The weary life—the welcome tomb.