We forgit the achin’ “Ploughman shanks” the laborer Burns must have carried sometimes to their trystin’ place beside the Bonny Doon.
For though you may lighten the labor of ploughin’ by religious poems, like the “Cotter’s Saturday Night,” or brave, heroic ones, like “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,” or verses to “A Mouse” and “A Mountain Daisy”—
“Wee sleekit, cowerin’, tim’rous beastie,”
and
“Wee modest, crimson-tippéd flower,”
and “Brigs” and “Glens” and “Water-fowls—”
And though he may have added a flavor to it by sarcastic verses to “Holy Willie,” and “The Deil,” and “The Unco Guid”—
Yet to hold the heavy plough as it tore its long furrows in the flinty soil wuz weary work, and the back and arms of the poet must have ached as sorely as any other ploughman’s.
But you forgit all that; they dwell here forever care free, serene in glowin’ youth and beauty.
How near they seemed to me, these immortal lovers, as I stood there lost in thought by the ripplin’ waters of the Bonny Doon!