Time but the impression deeper makes,
As streams—their channels deeper wear.
My Mary! dear departed shade!
Where is thy place of blissful rest?
Seest thou thy lover lowly laid?
Hear’st thou the groans that rend his breats?”
No one has painted with such consummate skill, such tender grace, and with such depth of coloring “the short and simple annals of the poor” as Burns has done. He knew by bitter experience the struggles of poverty, the grinding toil needed to wring from an inhospitable climate, and unkindly soil the meagre products which barely supported life. His “Cottars’ Saturday Night” is a picture of peasant life in Scotland unequalled for purity and beauty by any production of genius, and is, we think, the crowning triumph of his poetic skill. It is a finished production, and his words flash upon our memory and imagination those scnes of humble but honest poverty, pious worth and modest joys, which relieve the monotonous burden of the Scottish laborer’s daily toil. The week’s work is done, and the poor toiler, gathering his few implements together, wends his way across the moor to his humble home. His gleeful little ones run to meet him. He is saluted by the kindly smile of a contented wife. A bright fire throws a genial glow over his poor but tidy home. The elder brains drop in with the scanty pittances earned by domestic services among their neighbors. Jenny, the pride of the family, in the first bloom of womanhood, introduces with bashful modesty, an honest lad worthy of her love and confidence. The mother is glad that her brain is “respected like the lave.”
“The father chats of horses, plows, and kye.” The humble, hospitable board is spread, and the evening meal is eaten with grateful thanks to God. Then “the big ha’ Bible” is brought out, and the old song that fired to enthusiasm the children of the Scottish covenant in their wanderings, is sung, and “the saint, the father, and the husband prays:
“That thus they all shall meet in future days,
There, ever bask in uncreated rays,