Robert Burns

"Az in guš mi-girad, az ân guš dar mi-konad."

"I mewn drwy un glust ac allan drwy'r llall."

"Whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad."

"I would claim that Burns is not merely Scotland's greatest poet, but that he is worthy to rank among the greatest poets of the world... Why I claim this place for Burns is this—that he was the poet of nature and of humanity. He raised the conception of the peasant and gave honour and dignity to toil. It is for that reason that all the labouring classes and masses of the world have found in Burns their truest interpreter and their truest friend; and it is as that friend and as that interpreter that I do claim for him a place in the innermost niches of the temple of Fame."

"I also liked the Romantic poets. Wordsworth, Keats, Burns and Blake were some of my favourites. There was something about their rebellious spirit against the evils of industrialization that moved me. Of course now, some of their pessimism, mysticism and limited critical realist visions make me quite uncomfortable."

"I think Burns was one of the most extraordinary men I ever met with; his poetry surprised me very much, his prose surprised me still more, and his conversation surprised me more than both his poetry and prose."

"It's guid to be merry and wise, It's guid to be honest and true, It's guid to support Caledonia's cause And bide by the buff and the blue."

"But pleasures are like poppies spread— You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow falls in the river— A moment white—then melts forever."

"For a' that, and a' that An' twice as muckle 's a' that, I've lost but ane, I've twa behin', I've wife eneugh for a' that."

"In durance vile here must I wake and weep, And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep."

"Scottish virtues were due...to Wallace, who started the idea of independence, to John Knox for the ineradicable reverence for the Kirk, and to Robert Burns for that feeling of brotherhood and sense of humanity that got below all differences of rank."

"He speaks for a community he is rooted in, as Chaucer and Langland did. He is a lyrical poet of simple tenderness; but he is also a comic and satirical poet with a hard and definite moral vision, a very sharp eye indeed for permanent kinds of human folly, and a glancing and flickering wit... He is also a poet of the people as no modern English poet worth anything has been. He thus fills a gap for the English reader; and if young English poets, ingenious but academic, were to read him to-day they might learn to double their strength by touching the earth."

"The influence of Burns on the imaginative literature of Scotland has been deep and abiding. Many Scotsmen have been so touched, moved, and stirred by his writings, as to arouse an irrepressible feeling within them to compose verse themselves; and to-day there are many in the humble walks of life who can write passable and even animated verse and song, and appreciate the highest works of the imaginative and elaborate faculties of the race. Burns has exercised much influence over the mind of the Scottish people by removing prejudice and superstition, fostering liberty and independence of spirit, and greater freedom of thought."

"The worker is a mere appendage to the capitalist factory. Machinery has eliminated him. Robert Burns said: “O God, that men should be so cheap, and bread should be so dear!”"

"My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here, My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer; A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe, My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go."

"It was a' for our rightfu' King We left fair Scotland's strand."

"The landlady and Tam grew gracious Wi' favours secret, sweet, and precious."

"Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious, O'er a' the ills o' life victorious."

"As Tammie glow'red, amazed, and curious, The mirth and fun grew fast and furious."

"Ah, Tam! Ah! Tam! Thou'll get thy fairin! In hell they'll roast you like a herrin!"

"A fig for those by law protected! 's a glorious feast! Courts for cowards were erected, Churches built to please the ."

"If there's another world, he lives in bliss; If there is none, he made the best of this."

"Burns stood, as regarded the old and the new world of poetry, both in Scotland and in England, at the parting of the ways. He was at once the climax of the old and the harbinger of the new. He brought to perfection what many of his Scottish predecessors and models had practised with much charm and ability. In the vernacular Scottish song, in the satire, in the familiar Epistle, in dramatic narrative, he rose to a height which no successor could depose him. He was the greatest of Scottish poets. ... More than any one else, more than Cowper or Wordsworth, did he serve to break up the frost that seemed to be settling upon the lyric flow in England at the end of the last century. The renaissance of poetry early in this century owed much to him, and those who owed to poetry no small part of their higher education would not grudge him their thoughtful gratitude."

"Now, Robert Burns was a great man and a great poet, and the influence of his truly tremendous satiric and lyrical genius has been one of the great factors in the disintegration of Scottish superstition."

"There was neither fortune nor title in the man's pedigree, and yet he sprang from the salt of the earth, for he came from that lowland Scottish peasant stock which was one of the finest stocks that the world could show, if one might judge from its results. The limitations of these men might be marked, but there sprang from them every now and again one who could voice the feelings of his fellow men, and such a man was Robert Burns."

"He has given voice to all the experiences of common life; he has endeared the farm-house and cottage, patches and poverty, beans and barley; ale, the poor man's wine; hardship, the fear of debt, the dear society of weans and wife, of brothers and sisters, proud of each other, knowing so few, and finding amends for want and obscurity in books and thought. ... And, as he was thus the poet of the poor, anxious, cheerful, working humanity, so had he the language of low life. He grew up in a rural district, speaking a patois unintelligible to all but natives, and he has made that Lowland Scotch a Doric dialect of fame. It is the only example in history of a language made classic by the genius of a single man."

"He was a leading Liberal, certainly. It had been said by a great statesman in the old days that he did not care who made the laws so long as he could make the ballads. In the last century the accents of freedom were heard in Scotland in the ballads of Burns. "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled" and "A man's a man for a' that" were regarded as almost revolutionary in the days when he wrote."

"The economic truths of Socialism, its industrialism, and its sociology, must remain the vainest of vain dreamings unless we preserve among the people the political frame of mind which can appreciate democratic liberty and worth. When "a man's a man for a' that" is recited without making the blood tingle, the man has ceased to be."

"Burns had intellectual breadth and religious susceptibility enough to appropriate what was best in the two phases of the religious thought of his time. Thus it happened that while the average Moderate looked upon Calvinism as represented by the Covenanters as a detestable fanaticism, an enemy to the amenities of social life, Burns paid tribute to their magnificent stand for liberty... Burns, who had Covenanting blood in his veins, had no need to go to Rousseau for his democratic fervour. His "A man's a man for a' that" owes infinitely more to Samuel Rutherford than to Rousseau."

"There was a world of well-dressed company that evening in Dumfries; for the aristocracy of the adjacent country for twenty miles round had poured in to attend a county ball, and were fluttering in groupes along the sunny side of the street, gay as butterflies. On the other side, in the shade, a solitary individual paced slowly along the pavement. Of the hundreds who fluttered past, no one took notice of him; no one seemed to recognise him. He was known to them all as the exciseman and poet, Robert Burns; but he had offended the stately Toryism of the district by the freedom of his political creed; and so, tainted by the plague of Liberalism, he lay under strict quarantine. He was shunned and neglected; for it was with the man Burns that these his contemporaries had to deal. Let the reader contrast with this truly melancholy scene, the scene of his festival a fortnight since. Here are the speeches of the Earl of Eglinton and of Sir John M'Neill, and here the toast of the Lord Justice-General. Let us just imagine these gentlemen, with all their high aristocratic notions about them, carried back half a century into the past, and dropped down, on the sad evening to which we refer, in the main street of Dumfries. Which side, does the reader think, would they have chosen to walk upon? Would they have addressed the one solitary individual in the shade, or not rather joined themselves to the gay groupes in the sunshine who neglected and contemned him? They find it an easy matter to deal with the phantom idea of Burns now: how would they have dealt with the man then?"

"But to see her was to love her; Love but her, and love for ever. Had we never lov'd sae kindly, Had we never lov'd sae blindly, Never met—or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted."

"Now a' is done that men can do, And a' is done in vain."

"He turn'd him right and round about Upon the Irish shore; And gae his bridle reins a shake, With adieu forevermore, My dear— And adieu forevermore!"

"John Anderson, my jo, John, When we were first acquent, Your locks were like the raven, Your bonie brow was brent; But now your brow is beld, John, Your locks are like the snaw, But blessings on your frosty pow, John Anderson, my jo!"

"Where sits our sulky, sullen dame, Gathering her brows like gathering storm, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm."

"Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet To think how monie counsels sweet, How monie lengthened, sage advices, The husband frae the wife despises!"

"The landlord's laugh was ready chorus."

"His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony: Tam lo'ed him like a vera brither— They had been fou for weeks thegither."

"That hour, o' night's black arch the keystane."

"Inspiring bold John Barleycorn! What dangers thou canst make us scorn! Wi' tippenny, we fear nae evil; Wi' usquabae, we'll face the devil!"

"Her cutty sark, o' Paisley harn, That while a lassie she had worn, In longitude tho' sorely scanty, It was her best, and she was vauntie."

"Tam tint his reason a' thegither, And roars out — "Weel done, Cutty-sark!""

"I once was a maid, tho' I cannot tell when, And still my delight is in proper young men."

"Partly wi' o'ercome sae sair, And partly she was drunk."

"Life is all a , We regard not how it goes; Let them cant about , Who have characters to lose."

"God knows, I'm no the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be."

"Beauty's of a fading nature Has a season and is gone!"

"The white moon is setting behind the white wave, And Time is setting with me, O!"

"Their great national poet spoke to Scotland in her language, that he read the hearts of her people, and gave eloquent utterance to their dumb thoughts. In his scathing words he was able to condemn everything that was ignoble, selfish, and mean; and he stimulated everything that was noblest and best in the hearts of the people. He gave lessons of the loftiest patriotism and of aspirations for political freedom, while at the same time he maintained a steadfast devotion to the cause of everything that savoured of uncompromising hatred of oppression and wrong."

"Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North; The birth-place of valour, the country of worth."