My blessings aye attend the chiel
Wha pitied Gallia’s slaves, man,
And staw a branch, spite o’ the deil, stole
Frae yont the western waves, man.
Fair Virtue watered it wi’ care,
And now she sees wi’ pride, man,
How weel it buds and blossoms there,
Its branches spreading wide, man.
······
A wicked crew syne, on a time,
Did tak a solemn aith, man, oath
It ne’er should flourish to its prime,
I wat they pledged their faith, man.
Awa they gaed, wi’ mock parade,
Like beagles hunting game, man,
But soon grew weary o’ the trade,
And wished they’d stayed at hame, man.
Fair Freedom, standing by the tree,
Her sons did loudly ca’, man;
She sang a song o’ liberty, Marseillaise
Which pleased them ane and a’, man.
By her inspired, the new-born race
Soon drew the avenging steel, man;
The hirelings ran—her friends gied chase
And banged the despot weel, man.
······
Wi’ plenty o’ sic trees, I trow,
The warld would live at peace, man;
The sword would help to mak’ a plough;
The din o’ war wad cease, man.
The greatest poem Burns wrote to rejoice at the victorious progress of humanity towards freedom was his ‘Ode to Liberty,’ written to express his supreme gratification at the success of the people of the United States in their struggle for independence from England. He wrote it, as he wrote most of his poems during his life in Dumfries, in the moonlight in Lincluden Abbey ruins, on the Nith River, just outside of Dumfries. He introduces the ode in a poem named ‘A Vision.’
He tells that, at midnight, while in the ruins, he saw in the roofless tower of the abbey, a vision:
By heedless chance I turned my eyes,
And, by the moonbeam, shook to see
A stern and stalwart ghaist arise, ghost
Attired as minstrels wont to be.
Had I a statue been o’ stane,
His daring look had daunted me;
And on his bonnet graved was plain,
The sacred posy, ‘Libertie.’
And frae his harp sic strains did flow
Might rouse the slumbering dead to hear;
But oh! it was a tale of woe,
As ever met a Briton’s ear!
The ghost tells the story of the tyranny England exercised over the people of the United States, and of the breaking of the tyrant’s chains. Burns had no more respect for despotism by an English king than he had for the despotism of a tyrant in any other land. He knew the people of the American colonies were right. England’s greatest statesman, Pitt, had said so, when the colonists, driven to desperation, rebelled; so the ghost’s revelation should be to a liberty-loving Briton’s ear ‘a tale of woe.’
The ode begins:
No Spartan tube, no Attic shell,
No lyre Æolian I awake;
’Tis liberty’s bold note I swell;
Thy harp, Columbia, let me take!
See gathering thousands, while I sing,
A broken chain exultant bring,
And dash it in the tyrant’s face,
And dare him to his very beard,
And tell him he no more is feared—
No more the despot of Columbia’s race!
A tyrant’s proudest insults braved,
They shout—a People freed! They hail an Empire saved.
······
But come, ye sons of Liberty,
Columbia’s offspring, brave and free.
In danger’s hour still flaming in the van,
Ye know and dare maintain ‘the Royalty of Man.’
So the poem proceeds, till he appeals to King Alfred, and finally to Caledonia:
Alfred! on thy starry throne,
Surrounded by the tuneful choir,
The bards that erst have struck the patriotic lyre,
And rous’d the freeborn Briton’s soul of fire,
No more thy England own!
Dare injured nations form the great design,
To make detested tyrants bleed?
Thy England execrates the glorious deed!
Beneath her hostile banners waving,
Every pang of honour braving,
England, in thunder calls, ‘The tyrant’s cause is mine!’
That hour accurst how did the fiends rejoice,
And hell, through all her confines, raise the exulting voice!
That hour which saw the generous English name
Linkt with such damned deeds of everlasting shame!
Thee, Caledonia! thy wild heaths among,
Fam’d for the martial deed, the heaven-taught song,
To thee I turn with swimming eyes;
Where is that soul of Freedom fled?
Immingled with the mighty dead,
Beneath that hallow’d turf where Wallace lies!
Hear it not, Wallace! in thy bed of death.
Ye babbling winds! in silence sweep,
Disturb not ye the hero’s sleep,
Nor give the coward secret breath.
Is this the ancient Caledonian form,
Firm as the rock, resistless as the storm?
He loved to stir the liberty-loving spirit of his beloved Caledonia, so to her sons he makes the final appeal in his great ode. He wrote in a similar strain in the Prologue written for his friend Woods, the actor: