RANDOM NOTES No.III.

Southland Times, Issue 3486, 23 August 1879, Page 3

RANDOM NOTES No.III.

' (About Robert Burks akd his Poetry.) Robert Burns was the poet not of fiction but of truth. His 'true po«ver lies in three qualities, characteristic alike of the man and his poetry, sensibility, simplicity, and'reality. His smiles and tears, his passion and his pathos, his love and his pride, all are real, the product not of his fancy, but of his experience. Burns; -though the best of song writers, was no mere song writer. Had he never penned a song, his poems would have made him immortal. Tn any view, he must rank not merely as the createst.poet of humble station, but las one of the greatesfrpoets the world has produced. There is more genius in -Burns' Bangs than in Volumes of our modem transcendental poetry. ~ Sometimes in sublimity, sometimes in pathos, * sometimes in graphic description, sometimes in- elevated sentiment, sometimes in exquisite humor, but always in tender and' passionate emotion, Burns is withoat a rival and without a peer. 'What heart does not feel that the Cottar's Saturday Night, The Vision, The Lament, and the address to Mary in heaven, with others too numerous to mention, are poems of the rarest and highest order? What can be finer,' wild and startling 1 as it is, than the Address to the Deil, and the picture of the great enemy. ' " Whiles rangin' likeja roarin' lion, For prey a' holes an' corners tryin,' Whiles in the strong winged tempest flyin Tirlin' the Kirks, Whiles in the human bosom pryin' Unseen thou lurks." , „ What more inimitable than the concluding verse of this poem, and to what other poet' would the same thought occur? -" Now, fare yeweel, Auld Nickie Ben, O wad ye talk a thought an ' men." _ To every one well acquainted with the Scottish language. Tarn O'Shanter is magnificent. Notwithstanding the supernatural ingredients so admirably wrought into the tale, it has all the appearance of a reality. -Every Scotsman with a soul above the clods of the valley can close his vision on existing objects and, in the mind's eye, can see the Souter and Tain. " Wha lo'ed him like a very brither, , ' \ They had been f on for weeks thegithe And.the landlady and the cup in which - "Care, mad to see a man sac happy E'en drowned hersel amang the napp ," ' ' and theride in the storm, the auld haunted kirk,and the horrors on the table^feA knife his father's.throat had mangled, Whom his am son o' life bereft. The grey hairsjet stack to the heft." , The dance of the witches to the unearthly music of the. demon piper " Wha screwed the pipes" an' gart them skirl, . Till roof an' rafter a'' did dirl/' ' the furious Tush of< the startled legion with Cutty Sark at their head ; the crisis of Tarn's , fate at the " Key stane o' the "Brig ;" and the grey mare skelpin' hame without her tail. ' Iv the JttiOtit qf, this wjld description, where.

horror and humor prevail by turns, how beautifully is the vanity of earthly pleasures toucued off. " But pleasures are like poppiea spread You seize the flower, the bloom is fled ; * Or like the snowfalls on the river, A moment white, then gone for ever; Or like the Borealis race < That flit ere you can point the plnce, Or like the rainbow's lovely formEvanishing ami the storm" ! I '