TO MR. THOMSON.
[In this brief and off-hand way Burns bestows on Thompson one of the finest songs ever dedicated to the cause of human freedom.]
January, 1795.
I fear for my songs; however, a few may please, yet originality is a coy feature in composition, and in a multiplicity of efforts in the same style, disappears altogether. For these three thousand years, we poetic folks have been describing the spring, for instance; and as the spring continues the same, there must soon be a sameness in the imagery, &c., of these said rhyming folks.
A great critic (Aikin) on songs, says that love and wine are the exclusive themes for song-writing. The following is on neither subject, and consequently is no song; but will be allowed, I think, to be two or three pretty good prose thoughts inverted into rhyme.
Is there for honest poverty.[275]
I do not give you the foregoing song for your book, but merely by way of vive la bagatelle; for the piece is not really poetry. How will the following do for “Craigieburn-wood?”—
Sweet fa’s the eve on Craigieburn.[276]
Farewell! God bless you!
R. B.