Burns

On receiving a sprig of heather in blossom.     No more these simple flowers belong     To Scottish maid and lover;     Sown in the common soil of song,     They bloom the wide world over.     In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,     The minstrel and the heather,     The deathless singer and the flowers     He sang of live together.     Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns     The moorland flower and peasant!     How, at their mention, memory turns     Her pages old and pleasant!     The gray sky wears again its gold     And purple of adorning,     And manhood's noonday shadows hold     The dews of boyhood's morning.     The dews that washed the dust and soil     From off the wings of pleasure,     The sky, that flecked the, ground of toil     With golden threads of leisure.     I call to mind the summer day,     The early harvest mowing,     The sky with sun and clouds at play,     And flowers with breezes blowing.     I hear the blackbird in the corn,     The locust in the haying;     And, like the fabled hunter's horn,     Old tunes my heart is playing.     How oft that day, with fond delay,     I sought the maple's shadow,     And sang with Burns the hours away,     Forgetful of the meadow.     Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead     I heard the squirrels leaping,     The good dog listened while I read,     And wagged his tail in keeping.     I watched him while in sportive mood     I read "_The Twa Dogs_" story,     And half believed he understood     The poet's allegory.     Sweet day, sweet songs! The golden hours     Grew brighter for that singing,     From brook and bird and meadow flowers     A dearer welcome bringing.     New light on home-seen Nature beamed,     New glory over Woman;     And daily life and duty seemed     No longer poor and common.     I woke to find the simple truth     Of fact and feeling better     Than all the dreams that held my youth     A still repining debtor,     That Nature gives her handmaid, Art,     The themes of sweet discoursing;     The tender idyls of the heart     In every tongue rehearsing.     Why dream of lands of gold and pearl,     Of loving knight and lady,     When farmer boy and barefoot girl     Were wandering there already?     I saw through all familiar things     The romance underlying;     The joys and griefs that plume the wings     Of Fancy skyward flying.     I saw the same blithe day return,     The same sweet fall of even,     That rose on wooded Craigie-burn,     And sank on crystal Devon.     I matched with Scotland's heathery hills     The sweetbrier and the clover;     With Ayr and Doon, my native rills,     Their wood-hymns chanting over.     O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen,     I saw the Man uprising;     No longer common or unclean,     The child of God's baptizing!     With clearer eyes I saw the worth     Of life among the lowly;     The Bible at his Cotter's hearth     Had made my own more holy.     And if at times an evil strain,     To lawless love appealing,     Broke in upon the sweet refrain     Of pure and healthful feeling,     It died upon the eye and ear,     No inward answer gaining;     No heart had I to see or hear     The discord and the staining.     Let those who never erred forget     His worth, in vain bewailings;     Sweet Soul of Song! I own my debt     Uncancelled by his failings!     Lament who will the ribald line     Which tells his lapse from duty,     How kissed the maddening lips of wine     Or wanton ones of beauty;     But think, while falls that shade between     The erring one and Heaven,     That he who loved like Magdalen,     Like her may be forgiven.     Not his the song whose thunderous chime     Eternal echoes render;     The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme,     And Milton's starry splendor!     But who his human heart has laid     To Nature's bosom nearer?     Who sweetened toil like him, or paid     To love a tribute dearer?     Through all his tuneful art, how strong     The human feeling gushes     The very moonlight of his song     Is warm with smiles and blushes!     Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,     So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry;     Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme,     But spare his Highland Mary