The Complete Works. Robert Burns
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Название: The Complete Works

Автор: Robert Burns

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Языкознание

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isbn: 4064066396541

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СКАЧАТЬ fast in death!

      But if I must afflicted be,

       To suit some wise design;

       Then, man my soul with firm resolves

       To bear and not repine!

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH.

      [I have heard the third verse of this very moving Prayer quoted by scrupulous men as a proof that the poet imputed his errors to the Being who had endowed him with wild and unruly passions. The meaning is very different: Burns felt the torrent-strength of passion overpowering his resolution, and trusted that God would be merciful to the errors of one on whom he had bestowed such o’ermastering gifts.]

      O Thou unknown, Almighty Cause

       Of all my hope and fear?

       In whose dread presence, ere an hour

       Perhaps I must appear!

      If I have wander’d in those paths

       Of life I ought to shun;

       As something, loudly, in my breast,

       Remonstrates I have done;

      Thou know’st that Thou hast formed me,

       With passions wild and strong;

       And list’ning to their witching voice

       Has often led me wrong.

      Where human weakness has come short,

       Or frailty stept aside,

       Do Thou, All-Good! for such thou art,

       In shades of darkness hide.

      Where with intention I have err’d,

       No other plea I have,

       But, Thou art good; and goodness still

       Delighteth to forgive.

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       Table of Contents

      ON THE SAME OCCASION.

      [These verses the poet, in his common-place book, calls “Misgivings in the Hour of Despondency and Prospect of Death.” He elsewhere says they were composed when fainting-fits and other alarming symptoms of a pleurisy, or some other dangerous disorder, first put nature on the alarm.]

      Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?

       How I so found it full of pleasing charms?

       Some drops of joy with draughts of ill between:

       Some gleams of sunshine ‘mid renewing storms:

      Fain would I say, “Forgive my foul offence!”

       Fain promise never more to disobey;

       But, should my Author health again dispense,

       Again I might desert fair virtue’s way:

       Again in folly’s path might go astray;

       Again exalt the brute and sink the man;

       Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray,

       Who act so counter heavenly mercy’s plan?

       Who sin so oft have mourn’d, yet to temptation ran?

      O Thou, great Governor of all below!

       If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee,

       Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow,

       Or still the tumult of the raging sea:

       With that controlling pow’r assist ev’n me

       Those headlong furious passions to confine;

       For all unfit I feel my pow’rs to be,

       To rule their torrent in th’ allowed line;

       O, aid me with Thy help, Omnipotence Divine!

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       Table of Contents

      “Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are

       That bide the pelting of the pitiless storm!

       How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

       Your looped and widow’d raggedness defend you

       From seasons such as these?”

      Shakspeare.

      [“This poem,” says my friend Thomas Carlyle, “is worth several homilies on mercy, for it is the voice of Mercy herself. Burns, indeed, lives in sympathy: his soul rushes forth into all the realms of being: nothing that has existence can be indifferent to him.”]

      When biting Boreas, fell and doure,

       Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r;

       When Phœbus gies a short-liv’d glow’r

       Far south the lift,

       Dim-darkening through the flaky show’r,

       Or whirling СКАЧАТЬ