Robert Burns

Robert Burns (1759 - 1796) was a celebrated Scottish poet, born at Alloway, near Ayr, in 1759, son of an honest, intelligent peasant, who tried farming in a small way, but did not prosper. Robert tried farming himself on his father's decease in 1784, but took to rhyming by preference. Driven desperate in his circumstances, he meditated emigrating to Jamaica, and published a few poems he had composed to raise money for that end. He realised a few pounds thereby, and was about to set sail, when friends and admirers rallied round him and persuaded him to stay. He was invited to Edinburgh. His poems were reprinted, and money came in. Soon after he married, and took a farm, but failing, accepted the post of exciseman in Dumfries. He fell into bad health, and died in 1796, aged 37.

"His sun shone as through a tropical tornado, and the pale shadow of death eclipsed it at noon.... To the ill-starred Burns was given the power of making man's life more venerable, but that of wisely guiding his own life was not given.... And that spirit, which might have soared could it but have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious faculties trodden under foot in the blossom; and died, we may almost say, without ever having lived." See Carlyle's "Miscellanies" for by far the justest and wisest estimate of both the man and the poet that has yet by any one been said or sung. He is at his best in his "Songs," he says, which he thinks "by far the best that Britain has yet produced.... In them," he adds, "he has found a tune and words for every mood of man's heart; in hut and hall, as the heart unfolds itself in many-coloured joy and woe of existence, the name, the voice of that joy and that woe, is the name and voice which Burns has given them."

Wisdom & Quotes

• Lay the proud usurpers low!

Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us do or die!
- Scots Wha Hae

• To make a happy fireside clime

To wean & wife,
That's the true pathos and sublime
Of human life.
- To Dr Blacklock

• My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer.
- My Heart's in the Highlands

• But to see her was to love her,

Love but her, and love for ever.
- A Fond Kiss

• O, my luve's like a red red rose

That's newly sprung in June:
O my luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.
- My love is Like a Red Red Rose

• I once was a maid, tho' I cannot tell when,

And still my delight is in proper young men:
Some one of a troop of dragoons was my daddie,
No wonder I'm fond of a soldier laddie.
- The Jolly Beggars

• A man's a man for a'that!

- poem title

• Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.

- Man Was Made To Mourn

• Wee, sleekit, cow'ring, tim'rous beastie,

O what a panic's in thy breastie!
- To a Mouse

• The best-laid schemes o'mice an'men

Gang aft a-gley.
- To a Mouse

• Nature's mighty law is change.

- Let Not Women E'er Complain

• O whistle an' I'll come to ye, my lad,

O whistle an' I'll come to ye, my lad,
Tho' father an' mother an' a' should gae mad,
O whistle an' I'll come to ye, my lad.
- O Whistle an' I'll Come to Ye, My Lad

• The upright, honest-hearted man

Who strives to do the best he can,
Need never fear the church's ban
Or hell's damnation.
- Epistle to the Rev. John McMath

Johann C Friedrich von Schiller