And in the same poem, after having described the courtship, Burns bursts into this perfect flower:
"O happy love! where love like this is found!
O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!
I've pacèd much this weary, mortal round,
And sage experience bids me this declare:
If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare
One cordial in this melancholy vale,
'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair,
In other's arms, breathe out the tender tale
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the ev'ning gale."
Is there in the world a more beautiful—a more touching picture than the old couple sitting by the ingleside with clasped hands, and the pure, patient, loving old wife saying to the white-haired man who won her heart when the world was young:
"John Anderson, my jo, John,
When we were first acquent;
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonnie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snaw;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson, my jo.
"John Anderson, my jo, John,
We clamb the hill thegither;
And monie a canty day, John,
We've had wi' ane anither;
Now we maun totter down, John,
But hand in hand we'll go,
And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo."
Burns taught that the love of wife and children was the highest—that to toil for them was the noblest.
"The sacred lowe o' weel placed love,
Luxuriantly indulge it;
But never tempt the illicit rove,
Though naething should divulge it."
"I waine the quantum of the sin,
The hazzard o'concealing;
But och! it hardens all within,
And petrifies the feeling."
"To make a happy fireside clime
To weans and wife,
That's the true pathos, and sublime,
Of human life."
FRIENDSHIP.
He was the poet of friendship:
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min'?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' auld lang syne?"
Wherever those who speak the English language assemble—wherever the Anglo-Saxon people meet with clasp and smile—these words are given to the air.