ROBERT BURNS

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVII, Issue 23115, 1 February 1945, Page 3

ROBERT BURNS

An Appreciation (Contributed).

Readers, I am sure, were without exception, pleased with the eloquent tribute paid to Scotland’s poet—the world’s master writer of love songs— Robert Burns, spoken at Tuesday’s meeting of the Timaru Scottish Society by Mr W. S. Young. The speaker had as the subject of his address one lending itself to superlatives in exceptional degree—Burns was largely outside the range of comparatives—nothing but the former could do justice to such a theme. Mr Young acquitted himself admirably. The subject could have been extended almost indefinitely, as it is practically Inexhaustible. It has been a leading theme of exhibitions of eloquence of the last century and a half. The most eloquent have frequently failed, in spite of their varied vocabularies, to express the speaker’s veneration for one so bountifully endowed by Providence.

And Mr Young performed his part admirably. He referred appropriately enough to the unveiling of the statue in Timaru Park in 1913 by Sir Robert Stout, when he delivered a magnificent eulogy dealing with his gifted countryman’s unsurpassed contribution to Scottish literature as a song writer and lover of all that is beautiful in nature.

South Canterbury claims many lovers of Burns—what country does not? for Burns was too big for one country—he belongs to the universe. During the last 32 years a new generation has grown up—many South Canterbury people may not know all the associations of the province and Burns —of the innumerable addresses to which their predecessors were delighted to listen paying tribute to Scotland’s master poet. The monument in the Park, one of the many gifts of the late Mr James Craigie, M.P., to Timaru and South Canterbury, is a permanent token of appreciation of one Scot to another.