The deep emotions that sanctified that spot live on still in the heart of the world.
Devotion! heart-breakin’ grief! death! eternity! they are all brought nearer as we stand by these sparklin’ waters that flow on forever, whisperin’ the names of Robert Burns and his Highland Mary.
Other thoughts come to us anon, or a little later—thoughts of the labors and struggles of the poet to make a home and respectable livin’ for his family.
The warm poet nater, endowed, as all true poet souls are, with the fiery “love of love, and hate of hate, and scorn of scorn,” tryin’ to make its way in a practical, money-lovin’ age.
It wuz some like takin’ an eagle down from the heights, and trainin’ it to become a barn-yard fowl, or breakin’ in a wild gazelle to churn in a treadle machine.
It wuz hard work!
And the fashionable world, that took him up with the interest it would give to a new toy of a novel design, soon grew weary of him, and turned away coldly from the strugglin’ poet, in his unequal conflict with poor land, high rents, misaprehension, poverty, and hardships.
No wonder he turned away from the world at last and said to poor Jean (she that wuz Jean Armour), the wife who had been constant to him in evil and good report—
“I am wearin’ awa’, Jean;
Like snow in a thaw, Jean,