"O I'm wat, wat,
O I'm wat and weary;
Yet fain wad I rise and rin,
If I thocht I would meet my dearie.
Aye waukin', O!
Waukin' aye, and weary;
Sleep, I can get nane
For thinkin' o' my dearie.
Simmer's a pleasant time,
Flowers o' every color;
The winter rins ower the heugh,
And I long for my true lover.
When I sleep I dream,
When I wauk I'm eerie,
Sleep I can get nane,
For thinkin' o' my dearie.
Lanely nicht comes on,
A' the lave are sleepin';
I think on my true love,
And blear my e'en wi' greetin'.
Feather beds are saft--
Pentit rooms are bonnie;
But ae kiss o' my dear love
Better's far than ony.
O for Friday nicht!--
Friday at the gloamin';
O for Friday nicht--
Friday's lang o' comin'!"
This love-song, which Mr. Chambers gives from recitation, is, thinks
Uncle to himself, all but perfect; Burns, who in almost every instance,
not only adorned, but transformed and purified whatever of the old he
touched, breathing into it his own tenderness and strength, fails here,
as may be seen in reading his version.
"Oh, spring's a pleasant time!
Flowers o' every color--
_The sweet bird builds her nest_,
And I lang for my lover.
Aye wakin', oh!
Wakin' aye and _wearie_;
Sleep I can get nane,
For thinkin' o' my dearie!
"When I sleep I dream,
When I wauk I'm eerie,
Rest I canna get,
For thinkin' o' my dearie.
Aye wakin', oh!
Wakin' aye and weary;
_Come, come, blissful dream_,
Bring me to my dearie.
"_Darksome_ nicht comes doun--
A' the lave are sleepin';
I think on my kind lad,
And blin' my een wi' greetin'.
Aye wakin', oh!
Wakin' aye and wearie;
_Hope is sweet_, but ne'er
Sae sweet as my dearie!"
How weak these italics! No one can doubt which of these is the better.
The old song is perfect in the procession, and in the simple beauty of
its thoughts and words. A ploughman or shepherd--for I hold that it is a
man's song--comes in "wat, wat" after a hard day's work among the
furrows, or on the hill. The _watness_ of wat, wat, is as much wetter
than wet as a Scotch mist is more of a mist than an English one; and he
is not only wat, wat, but "weary," longing for a dry skin and a warm bed
and rest; but no sooner said and felt, than, by the law of contrast, he
thinks on "Mysie" or "Ailie," his Genevieve; and then "all thoughts, all
passions, all delights," begin to stir him, and "fain wad I rise and
rin" (what a swiftness beyond run is "rin"!) Love now makes him a poet;
the true imaginative power enters and takes possession of him. By this
time his clothes are off, and he is snug in bed; not a wink can he
sleep; that "fain" is domineering over him,--and he breaks out into what
is as genuine passion and poetry, as anything from Sappho to
Tennyson--abrupt, vivid, heedless of syntax. "Simmer's a pleasant time."
Would any of our greatest geniuses, being limited to one word, have done
better than take "pleasant?" and then the fine vagueness of "time!"
"Flowers o' every color;" he gets a glimpse of "herself a fairer
flower," and is off in pursuit. "The water rins ower the heugh" (a steep
precipice); flinging itself wildly, passionately over, and so do I long
for my true lover. Nothing can be simpler and finer than
"When I sleep, I dream;
When I wauk, I'm eerie."
"Lanely nicht;" how much richer and touching than "darksome." "Feather
beds are saft;" "paintit rooms are bonnie;" I would infer from this,
that his "dearie," his "true love," was a lass up at "the big house"--a
dapper Abigail possibly--at Sir William's at the Castle, and then we
have the final paroxysm upon Friday nicht--Friday at the gloamin'! O for
Friday nicht!--Friday's lang o' comin'!--it being very likely Thursday
before daybreak, when this affectionate _ululatus_ ended in repose.
Now, is not this rude ditty, made very likely by some clumsy, big-headed
Galloway herd, full of the real stuff of love? He does not go off upon
her eyebrows, or even her eyes; he does not sit down, and in a genteel
way announce that "love in thine eyes forever sits," &c. &c., or that
her feet look out from under her petticoats like little mice: he is far
past that; he is not making love, he is in it. This is one and a chief
charm of Burns' love-songs, which are certainly of all love-songs except
those wild snatches left to us by her who flung herself from the
Leucadian rock, the most in earnest, the tenderest, the "most moving
delicate and full of life." Burns makes you feel the reality and the
depth, the truth of his passion; it is not her eyelashes or her nose, or
her dimple, or even
"A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip,"
that are "winging the fervor of his love;" not even her soul; it is
herself. This concentration and earnestness, this _perfervor_ of our
Scottish love poetry, seems to me to contrast curiously with the light,
trifling philandering of the English; indeed, as far as I remember, we
have almost no love-songs in English, of the same class as this one, or
those of Burns. They are mostly either of the genteel, or of the
nautical (some of these capital), or of the comic school. Do you know
the most perfect, the finest love-song in our or in any language; the
love being affectionate more than passionate, love in possession not in
pursuit?
"Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast
On yonder lea, on yonder lea,
My plaidie to the angry airt,
I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee:
Or did Misfortune's bitter storms
Around thee blaw, around thee blaw,
Thy bield should be my bosom,
To share it a', to share it a'.
"Or were I in the wildest waste,
Sae black and bare, sae black and bare,
The desert were a paradise,
If thou wert there, if thou wert there:
Or were I monarch o' the globe,
Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign,
The brightest jewel in my crown
Wad be my queen, wad be my queen."
The following is Mr. Chambers' account of the origin of this
song:--Jessy Lewars had a call one morning from Burns. He offered, if
she would play him any tune of which she was fond, and for which she
desired new verses, that he would do his best to gratify her wish. She
sat down at the piano, and played over and over the air of an old song,
beginning with the words--
"The robin cam' to the wren's nest,
And keekit in, and keekit in:
'O weel's me on your auld pow!
Wad ye be in, wad ye be in?
Ye' se ne'er get leave to lie without,
And I within, and I within,
As lang 's I hae an auld clout,
To row ye in, to row ye in.'"
Uncle now took his candle, and slunk off to bed, slipping up noiselessly
that he might not disturb the thin sleep of the sufferer, saying in to
himself--"I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee;" "If thou wert there, if
thou wert there;" and though the morning was at the window, he was up by
eight, making breakfast for John and Mary.
* * * * *
Love never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail;
whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge,
it shall vanish away; but love is of God, and cannot fail.
_ARTHUR H. HALLAM._
"PRAESENS _imperfectum,--perfectum, plusquam perfectum_
FUTURUM."--GROTIUS.
"_The idea of thy life shall sweetly creep
Into my study of imagination;
And every lovely organ of thy life
Shall come apparelled in more precious habit--
More moving delicate, and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of my soul,
Than when thou livedst indeed._"