During his last session at College, Michael accepted a proposal to teach a small school at Gairney Bridge, which lies on a small stream running into Lochleven. He finished his collegiate studies honorably, having distinguished himself chiefly in rhetoric and belles lettres. At Gairney Bridge he had some thirty or forty pupils under his care, whom he governed entirely without the rod, then pretty thoroughly used in Scotland. But the compensation was a mere trifle, not exceeding more than sixty or seventy dollars a year.
It was in this place that he wrote several of his poems, and became deeply attached to a beautiful young woman in the neighborhood, to whom, however, he never declared his passion.
About this time he joined the church in Kinross, under the pastoral care of the Rev. Mr. Swanston, recently appointed professor of Theology in the United Secession Church. This learned and amiable man conceived a strong attachment for Michael, and ever treated him with the greatest consideration and kindness. Subsequently he engaged to teach a school at Forest Mill, a dreary sort of place, with miserable school accommodations. His health too, was declining. While fording the Devon on horseback, the horse stumbled and immersed him in the stream, a circumstance which greatly aggravated his consumptive tendency. Moreover he was disappointed in his school, and his health and spirits rapidly declined. In a letter to Mr. Arnot, he says, "I expected to be happy here, but I am not. The easiest part of my life is past. I sometimes compare my condition with that of others, and imagine if I was in theirs it would be well. But is not everybody thus! Perhaps he whom I envy thinks he would be glad to change with me, and yet neither would be better for the change. Since it is so, let us, my friend, moderate our hopes and fears, resign ourselves to the will of Him who doeth all things well, and who hath assured us that he careth for us.
'Si res sola potest facere et servare beatum
Hoc primus repetas opus, hoc postremus omittas.'
"Things are not very well in the world, but they are pretty well. They might have been worse, and such as they are may please us who have but a few short days to use them. This scene of affairs, though a very perplexed, is a very short one, and in a little while all will be cleared up. Let us endeavor to please God, our fellow creatures and ourselves. In such a course of life we shall be as happy as we can expect in such a world as this. Thus you, who cultivate your farm with your own hands, and I who teach a dozen blockheads for bread, may be happier than he, who having more than he can use, tortures his brain to invent some new methods of killing himself with the superfluity." In this letter, worthy of Cowper or of Foster, we see a brave spirit struggling with the direst misfortunes, poverty and disease, and overcoming both by the silent might of a believing spirit.
Another thing which greatly afflicted Bruce at Forest Mill, was the total want of agreeable scenery, and it was only by an effort of memory and imagination that he could, in some measure make up this deficiency, by recalling the delightful scenery of his early home. To this combination of unfavorable circumstances he touchingly refers in the poem of Lochleven, which was actually produced under their influence, as a means of relaxation and enjoyment.
"Thus sang the youth amid unfertile wilds,
And nameless deserts, unpoetic ground!
Far from his friends he strayed, recording thus
The dear remembrance of his native fields,
To cheer the tedious night, while slow disease
Preyed on his pining vitals, and the blasts
Of dark December shook his humble cot."
"Lochleven" is his longest, and in most respects, his most beautiful poem. It has defects, obvious enough to a critical eye, but its general excellence strikes every reader. Its descriptions and delineations are natural and striking, its imagery is simple and poetical, and its measure sweet and melodious. Nearly the whole of it has been "used up," in beautiful extracts by different writers of distinction.
But the composition of this poem seems to have been too much for Bruce's shattered frame; for he was compelled almost immediately to relinquish his school. He had just strength to walk home to Kinnesswood, a distance of nearly twenty miles, resting only a short time at Turf-hills on the way. Though nowhere on earth could he be happier than in the humble cottage of his parents, it was yet the worst place in the world for his disease. "The vapors rising from the lake," says his biographer, "particularly in spring, keep the atmosphere constantly in a state of moisture, whilst in the mornings and evenings the eastern haars, as the fogs which come up from the sea are called by the inhabitants, come rolling down the hills, and hang suspended over Kinnesswood like a dripping curtain."
He had expected, in the quiet of his father's home and in the vicinity of his dear Lochleven, a restoration of health; but in this hope he was disappointed. The mark of death was upon him. The heart of the beauteous tree was poisoned by disease, and all its leaves faded and fell to the ground. It was under the consciousness of this fact, that he wrote his beautiful and affecting "Ode to Spring," which he sent to a dear friend to apprise him of his approaching dissolution. The following are its concluding stanzas.