passionately admire him, I shall, perhaps, be blamed, as having said too little.[1]
- ↑ The following letter and poem by Burns were first published in the original edition of this work:
LETTER TO MR BURNESS, AT MONTROSE.
My Dear Sir,
I this moment receive yours receive—it with the honest hospitable warmth of a friend's welcome. Whatever comes from you wakens always up the bitter blood about my heart, which your kind little recollections of my parental friends carries as far as it will go. 'Tis there, Sir, that man is blest! 'tis there, my friend, man feels a consciousness of something within him above the trodden clod! The grateful reverence to the hoary, earthly author of his being the burning glow, when he clasps the woman of his soul to his bosom the tender yearnings of heart for the little angels to whom he has given existence,—these nature has poured in milky streams about the human heart; and the man who never rouses them to action, by the inspiring influences of their proper objects, loses by far the most pleasurable part of his existence.
My departure is uncertain, but I do not think it will be till after harvest. I will be on very short allowance of time, indeed, if I do not comply with your friendly invitation. When it will be I don't know, but if I can make my wish good, I will endeavour to drop you a line sometime before. My best compliments to Mrs ——; I should [be] equally mortified should I drop in when she is abroad; but of that, I suppose, there is little chance.
What I have wrote, heaven knows; 1 have not time to review it: so accept of it in the beaten way of friendship. With the ordinary phrase, perhaps, rather more than ordinary sincerity, I am, dear Sir, ever yours, &c.
Mosgiel, Tuesday noon,
Sept. 26, 1786.
ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CHILD
O sweet be thy sleep in the land of the grave,
My dear little angel, for ever—
For ever—oh no I let not man be a slave,
His hopes from existence to sever.
Though cold be the clay where thou pillow 'st thy head,
In the dark silent mansions of sorrow,
The spring shall return to thy low narrow bed,
Like the beam of the day-star to-morrow.
The flower-stem shall bloom like thy sweet seraph form,
Ere the Spoiler had nipt thee in blossom,
When thou shrunk from the scowl of the loud winter storm ,
And nestled thee close to that bosom.
O still I behold thee, all lovely in death,
Reclined on the lap of thy mother,
When the tear trickled bright, when the short stifled breath,
Told how dear ye were aye to each other.
My child, thou art gone to the home of thy rest,
Where suffering no longer can harm thee,
Where the songs of the good, where the hjinns of the blest
Through an endless existence shall charm thee.
While he, thy fond parent, must, sighing, sojourn
Through the dire desert regions of sorrow,
O'er the hope and misfortune of being to mourn,
And sigh for this life's latest morrow.
