Bonnie Robbie Burns Day

So today is Robbie Burns day, celebrating the birth of the Scottish poet. Probably his most well know poem/song is 'Auld Lang Syne' which is popularly sung on New Year's Eve (thanks in part to Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians).

Keeping with the general seasonal theme of my HNT posts (post 1 and 3), here is Robert Burns' poem Winter: A Dirge (copied from page 4 of 'The Poetical Works of Robert Burns. Edited with a critical memoir by William Michael Rossetti.' Publication date unknown.)

WINTER:
A Dirge.

This poem was copied into Burns's Commonplace Book, with the remarks appended :- "As I am what the men of the world, if they knew such a man, would call a whimsical mortal, I have various sources of pleasure and enjoyment which are in a manner peculiar to myself, or some here and there such out-of-the-way person. Such is the peculiar pleasure I take in the season of Winter more than the rest of the year. This, I believe, may be partly owing to my misfortunes giving my mind a melancholy cast : but there is something oven in the
'Mighty tempest, and the heavy wast,
Abrupt, and deep, strtch'd o'er the buried earth,'
which raises the mind to a serious sublimity favourable to everything great and noble. There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more - I do not know if I should call it pleasure - but something which exalts me - something which entraptures me - than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood, or high plantation, in a cloudy winter-day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees and raving over the plain. It is my best season for devotion : my mind is rapt up in a kind of enthusiasm to Him, who, in the pompous language of the Hebrew bard, 'walks on the wings of the wind.' In one of these seasons, just after a train of misfortunes, I composed the following :"

The wintry west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw ;
Or, the stormy north send driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw :
While tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
And roars frae bank to brae ;
And bird and beast in covert rest,
And pass the heartless day.

"The swpeeping blast, the sky o'ercast," *
The joyless winter-day,
Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May :
The tempest's howl, it soothe my soul,
My griefs it seems to join ;
The leafless trees my fancy please,
Their fate resembled mine!

Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme
These woes of mine fulfil,
Here, firm, I rest, they might be best,
Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want (oh, do Thou grant
This one request of mine!)
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,
Assist me to resign.


* Dr. Young.