Wall, his forebodin’ wuz correct; Death, a more triumphant and constant lover than poor Burns would have been, bore off the bonny lassie into his icy but secure realm—mebby beyend the star her bereft lover apostrophized so long afterwards a-talkin’ to her “dear departed shade—”
“Thou ling’ring star, with less’ning ray,
That lovest to greet the early morn;
Again thou usher’st in the day
My Mary from my soul was torn.”
This immortal pair of lovers.
But though Death bore her off in her first sweet youth, and him long years after, a sad, middle-aged man, with a big family of children, who called another woman mother—still they stand there by the Bonny Doon.
The blue eyes and the brown eyes (that have been dust for a century) are still lookin’ love to each other.
Warm, clingin’ hands, that can hardly be torn apart, love so great that it fills the universe—love! constancy! despair! heartache! flowin’ out from the rapt atmosphere that surrounds this immortal pair of lovers; it is a power that enfolds all feelin’ hearts.