A FEW WORDS ON POETS IN GENERAL, AND ONE IN PARTICULAR.
BY THE GHOST OF T— H—D.
"What's in a name?"—Shakespeare.
I.
By different names were Poets call'd
In different climes and times;
The Welsh and Irish call'd him Bard,
Who was confined to rhymes.
II
In France they called them Troubadours,
Or Menestrels, by turns;
The Scandinavians called them Scalds,
The Scotchmen call theirs Burns.
III.
A strange coincidence is this,
Both names implying heat;
But had the Scotchmen call'd theirs Scald.
'Twere title more complete.
IV.
For why call'd BURNS 'tis hard to say
(Except all sense to slaughter);
Scald was the name he should have had,
Being always in hot water.
V.
For he was poor,—his natal hut
Was built of mud, they say;
But though the hut was built of mud,
He was no common clay.
VI.
But though of clay he was (a fate
Each child of earth must share),
As well as being a child of earth,
He was a child of Ayr.
VII.
And though he could not vaunt his house,
Nor boast his birth's gentility,
Nature upon the boy bestow'd
Her patent of nobility.
VIII.
It needed not for him his race
In heralds' books should shine;
What pride of ancestry compares
With his illustrious line.
IX.
So he, with heaven-ennobled soul,
All heralds held in scorn,
Save one, the oldest of them all,—
"The herald of the morn."
X.
Call'd by his clarion, up rose he,
True liege of Nature's throne,
Fields to invest, and mountain crest
With blazon of his own.
XI.
His Vert, the morning's dewy green,
His Purpure, evening's close,
His Azure, the unclouded sky,
His Gules, "the red, red rose."
XII.
His Argent sparkled in the streams
That flash'd through birken bowers;
His Or was in the autumn leaves
That fell in golden showers.
XIII.
Silver and gold of other sort
The poet had but little;
But he had more of rarer store,—
His heart's undaunted mettle.
XIV.
And yet his heart was gentle, too,—
Sweet woman could enslave him;
And from the shafts of Cupid's bow
Even Armour[6] could not save him.
XV.
And if that Armour could not save
From shafts that chance might wield,
What wonder that the poet wise
Cared little for a shield.
XVI.
And Sable, too, and Argent (which
For colours heralds write)
In BURNS' uncompromising hands
Were honest black and white.
XVII.
And in that honest black and white
He wrote his verses bold;
And though he sent them far abroad,
Home truths they always told.
XVIII.
And so for "honest poverty"
He sent a brilliant page down;
And, to do battle for the poor,
The gauger threw his gauge down.
XIX.
For him the garb of "hodden gray"
Than tabards had more charms;
He took the part of sleeveless coats
Against the Coats of Arms.
XX.
And although they of Oxford may
Sneer at his want of knowledge,
He had enough of wit at least,
To beat the Heralds' College.
XXI.
The growing brotherhood of his kind
He clearly, proudly saw that,
When launching from his lustrous mind,
"A man's a man for a' that!"
Rival Rhymes, in honour of Burns; by Ben Trovato (Routledge), London, 1859.