O blaw ye westlin winds, blaw soft among the leafy trees!
Wi' gentle gale, fra' muir and dale, bring hame the laden bees!
And bring the lassie back to me, that's aye sae sweet and clean,
Ae blink o' her wad banish care, sae lovely is my Jean!
What sighs and vows, amang the knowes, hae past between us twa!
How fain to meet! how wae to part!—that day she gaed awa!
The powers above can only ken, to whom the heart is seen,
That none can be sae dear to me, as my sweet lovely Jean!
Nothing can be more lovely than the luxuriant, though rural imagery, the tone of placid but deep tenderness, which pervades this sweet song; and to feel all its harmony, it is not necessary to sing it—it is music in itself.
In November 1788, Mrs. Burns took up her residence at Elliesland, and entered on her duties as a wife and mistress of a family, and her husband welcomed her to her home ("her ain roof-tree,") with the lively, energetic, but rather unquotable song, "I hae a wife o' my ain;" and subsequently he wrote for her, "O were I on Parnassus Hill," and that delightful little bit of simple feeling—
She is a winsome wee thing,
She is a handsome wee thing,
She is a bonnie wee thing,
This sweet wee wife of mine.
I never saw a fairer,
I never lo'ed a dearer,—
And next my heart I'll wear her,
For fear my jewel tine!
and one of the finest of all his ballads, "Their groves o' green myrtle," which not only presents a most exquisite rural picture to the fancy, but breathes the very soul of chastened and conjugal tenderness.
I remember, as a particular instance—I suppose there are thousands—of the tenacity with which Burns seizes on the memory, and twines round the very fibres of one's heart, that when I was travelling in Italy, along that beautiful declivity above the river Clitumnus, languidly enjoying the balmy air, and gazing with no careless eye on those scenes of rich and classical beauty, over which memory and fancy had shed
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the earth;
even then, by some strange association, a feeling of my childish years came over me, and all the livelong day I was singing, sotto voce—