The value of the reflective element is more mixed. The most quoted passage, that beginning
“But pleasures are like poppies spread,”
can only be regretted. With its literacy similes, its English, its artificial diction, it is a patch of cheap silk upon honest homespun. But the other pieces of interspersed comment are all admirable. The ironic apostrophes—to Tam for neglecting his wife's warnings; to shrewish wives, consoling them for their husband's deafness to advice; to John Barleycorn, on the transient courage he inspires; to Tam again, when tragedy seems imminent—are all in perfect tone, and do much to add the element of drollery that mixes so delightfully with the weirdness of the scene. And like the other elements in the poem they are commendably short, for Burns nearly always fulfills Bagehot's requirement that poetry should be “memorable and emphatic, intense, and soon over.”
TAM O' SHANTER
A Tale
Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this Buke.
Garvin Douglas.
When chapman billies leave the street, pedlar fellows
And drouthy neibors neibors meet, thirsty
As market-days are wearing late,
An' folk begin to tak the gate; road
While we sit bousing at the nappy, ale