Where once beneath a monarch’s feet
Sat Legislation’s sov’ran pow’rs!
Here we see a paltry classicism and a metrical scrupulousness (leadingto the mutilation of words like “pow’rs”) that were far below Burns’s notice. The latter vice will be seen even in such poems as To Mary in Heaven, quoted above. But when he shakes himself free from such trifling arts his style is full and strong, and as redolent of the soil as his own mountain daisy.
(f) As the national poet of Scotland his position is unique. He is first, and the rest nowhere. His rod, like Aaron’s, has swallowed up the rods of the other Scottish poets; so that in the popular fancy he is the author of any striking Scottish song, such as Annie Laurie or Auld Robin Gray. His dominating position is due to three factors:
(1) He has a matchless gift of catching traditional airs and wedding them to words of simple and searching beauty. It is almost impossible to think of Auld Lang Syne or Scots wha hae or Green grow the Rashes, O! without their respective melodies being inevitably associated with them. And these tunes were born in the blood of the Scottish peasant.
(2) He rejoices in descriptions of Scottish scenery and customs. The Cotter’s Saturday Night is packed with such features, and all through his work are glimpses of typical Scottish scenes. The opening stanzas of A Winter Night are often quoted to show his descriptive power:
When biting Boreas, fell and doure,
Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r;
When Phœbus gives a short-liv’d glow’r,
Far south the lift,