SONG I DREAM'D I LAY. (JOHNSON'S MUSEUM, 1788.) These two stanzas I composed when I was seventeen, and are among the oldest of my printed pieces.-Glenriddell Notes in Cromek. I DREAM'D I lay where flowers were springing List'ning to the wild birds singing, By a falling crystal stream: Straight the sky grew black and daring; Thro' the woods the whirlwinds rave; Trees with aged arms were warring, Such was my life's deceitful morning, But lang or noon, loud tempests storming, She promis'd fair, and perform'd but ill, muddy ere all many [There can be no doubt that this production was suggested to the young lyrist by his admiration of Mrs. Cockburn's song, "I've seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling," which, about the year 1764, found its way into miscellaneous collections of song. It appeared in one of these published in that year, called The Blackbird; and also in a like miscellany entitled The Charmer, and in another named The Lark (both of the latter dated 1765). Any one of them may have been that "Select Collection" which, he tells us, was his vade mecum before the Burness family removed from Mount Oliphant. The poet again and again reverts to the last four lines of this song, as if the conning them over yielded him some comfort. 'At the close of that dreadful period"-his distress at Irvine-he adopted these lines as the opening of a little "sang to soothe his misery," only altering line third to suit his altered circumstances, thus: Of mistress, friends and wealth bereaved me. But the embryo minstrel, in composing the present song, had Mrs. Cockburn's Flowers of the Forest rather too much in his eye; for he not only copied her ideas, but her very expressions. For her "silver streams shining in the sunny beams," we have here the tyro's "crystal stream falling "gaily in the sunny beam." The river Tweed of Mrs. Cockburn "grows drumly and dark," and so does the streamlet of the young dreamer become a "swelling drumlie wave." The lady hears "loud tempests storming before the mid-day," and so does the boy Burns hear "lang or noon, loud tempests storming." Finally, the authoress is "perplexed” with the "sporting of fickle fortune," and our poet is wretchedly “deceived" by the ill-performed promises of the same "fickle fortune;" and, not to be outdone by the lady's defiance of fortune's frowns, the independent youngster boasts that he "bears a heart shall support him still." Robert Chambers refers to these similitudes in his last remarks on this song.] SONG IN THE CHARACTER OF A RUINED FARMER. Tune-"Go from my window, Love, do." (CHAMBERS, 1852, COMPARED WITH THE ORIG. MS.) THE sun he is sunk in the west, All creatures retired to rest, While here I sit, all sore beset, With sorrow, grief, and woe : And it's O, fickle Fortune, O! The prosperous man is asleep, And it's O, fickle Fortune, O! There lies the dear partner of my breast; Must I see thee, my youthful pride, Thus brought so very low! And it's O, fickle Fortune, O! There lie my sweet babies in her arms; And it's O, fickle Fortune, O! I once was by Fortune carest: I once could relieve the distrest: Now life's poor support, hardly earn'd, And it's O, fickle Fortune, O! No comfort, no comfort I have! How welcome to me were the grave! O whither, O whither shall I turni All friendless, forsaken, forlorn! I never more shall know! [The original of this early production is in the possession of William Nelson, Esq., Edinburgh. It is a stray leaf from a collection formerly known as the Stair MS., now dissevered and scattered abroad. The "ruined farmer " here is undoubtedly meant as a presentment of the author's father bravely struggling to weather out his hard fate at Mount Oliphant. As a pathetic dirge, it is the best illustration of the following passage in the poet's autobiography :— My father was "The farm proved a ruinous bargain. advanced in life when he married. I was the eldest of seven children, and he, worn out by early hardship, was unfit for labour. My father's spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken. There was a freedom in his lease in two years more; and to weather these two years we retrenched expenses," &c.] TRAGIC FRAGMENT. (FROM THE POET'S MS. IN THE MONUMENT AT EDINBURGH, WITH HEADING FROM CROMEK, 1808.) In my early years, nothing less would serve me than courting the Tragic Muse. I was, I think, about eighteen or nineteen when I sketched the outlines of a tragedy forsooth; but the bursting of a cloud of family misfortunes, which had for some time threatened us, prevented my farther progress. In those days I never wrote down anything; so, except a speech or two, the whole has escaped my memory. The following, which I most distinctly remember, was an exclamation from a great character-great in occasional instances of generosity, and daring at times in villanies. He is supposed to meet with a child of misery, and exclaims to himself— ALL villain as I am-a damnéd wretch, Ye, whom the seeming good think sin to pity; Oh! but for friends and interposing Heaven, [Notwithstanding the author's own authority for classing the foregoing with his very earliest efforts in poetical composition, it seems to have undergone revision and amendment at a later period. The copy we print from is perhaps a stray leaf of the Common-place Book, or manuscript collection of his early pieces, referred to by Alexander Smith as having been presented by Burns to Mrs. Dunlop. It varies somewhat from the copy inserted in the original Common-place Book now at Greenock. we adopt has the following heading— The version A Fragment in the Hour of Remorse, on Seeing a Fellow-Creature in Misery, whom I had once known in Better Days. The "human wretchedness" deplored in this pathetic soliloquy was that of the suffering household at Mount Oliphant, which the poet has so touchingly recorded in his autobiography. We have in these lines a glance at the tyrant factor, and his "insolent, threatening epistles, which used to set us all in tears,” With tears indignant I behold the oppressor in which last line we discern the "stubborn, ungainly integrity " of the poet's noble father. The speaker's sympathy for "poor, despised, abandoned vagabonds," corresponds in spirit with that passage in the Common-place Book, of date March, 1784, where he introduces this Fragment. Cromek, in 1808, first published the piece; but his copy wants the five closing lines, which accordingly we infer were added by the poet in 1784. Cromek's version was printed from a copy found among the poet's papers, headed with the introductory narrative prefixed to the text. It is curious to find Burns thus early attempting dramatic composition; but it is certain that William Burness had a few of Shakespeare's plays among the books on his shelf at Mount Oliphant.] |