Poor Leezie’s heart maist lap the hool;
Near lav’rock-height she jumpit,
But mist a fit, an’ in the pool
Out-owre the lugs she plumpit,
Wi’ a plunge that night.”
Would any one who can feel the force of that description allow that it could be expressed in literary English without losing much of its charm?
I have said that Burns’s glances at Nature are almost all incidental, and, by the way, and this enhances their value. There is, however, a passage in an Epistle to William Simpson, in which he addresses Nature directly, and speaks out more consciously the feeling with which she inspired him:—
“O, sweet are Coila’s haughs an’ woods,
When lintwhites chant amang the buds,
And jinkin hares, in amorous whids,