Gang aft agley
An, lea us naught but grief and pain
For promised joy.”
Perhaps the key note to Burns’ muse may be found in the homage which he paid to woman. “He was alwoys in love,” and he sang of love in strains as sweet as any mortal minstrel ever made, but he was only a mortal after all: and his illicit loves are the darkest blot on his name. But at first this passion burned with a pure and guileless fervor; and the sweetest lyric of his muse is the product of an early attachment for Mary Campbell whom “death untimely frost” snatched from his embrace. On the anniversary of her death, he had stayed out all night in the barn, tossing and tumbling till the dawn of day; and before the morning star was quenched in the rising sun, he went into the house and wrote:
“Thou lingering star, with less’ning ray,
That lov’st to greet the early morn,
Again, thou usher’st in the day,
My Mary, from my soul was torn.
O, Mary! dear departed shade!
Where is thy place of blissful rest?