The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume III Part 12

Tennyson was what is called religious. He believed in the divinity of decorum, not falling on his face before the Eternal King, but bowing gracefully, as all lords should, while uttering thanks for favors partly undeserved, and thanks more fervid still for those to come.

Burns had the deepest and the tenderest feelings in his heart. The winding stream, the flowering shrub, the shady vale--these were trysting places where the real G.o.d met those he loved, and where his spirit prompted thoughts and words of thankfulness and praise, took from their hearts the dross of selfishness and hate, leaving the gold of love.

In the religion of Burns, form was nothing, creed was nothing, feeling was everything. He had the religious climate of the soul, the April that receives the seed, the June of blossom, and the month of harvest.

Burns was a real poet of nature. He put fields and woods in his lines.

There were principles like oaks, and there were thoughts, hints and suggestions as shy as violets beneath the withered leaves. There were the warmth of home, the social virtues born of equal state, that touched the heart and softened grief; that make breaches in the cruel walls of pride; that make the rich and poor clasp hands and feel like comrades, warm and true.

The house in which his spirit lived was not large. It enclosed only s.p.a.ce enough for common needs, built near the barren land of want; but through the open door the sunlight streamed, and from its windows all the stars were seen, while in the garden grew the common flowers--the flowers that all the ages through have been the messengers of honest love; and in the fields were heard the rustling corn, and reapers songs, telling of well-requited toil; and there were trees whose branches rose and fell and swayed while birds filled all the air with music born of joy. He read with tear-filled eyes the human page, and found within his breast the history of hearts.

Tennyson's imagination lived in a palace ample, wondrous fair, with dome and spire and galleries, where eyes of proud old pedigree grew dim with gazing at the portraits of the worthless dead; and there were parks and labyrinths of walks and ways and artificial lakes where sailed the "double swans;" and there were flowers from far-off lands with strange perfume, and men and women of the grander sort, telling of better days and n.o.bler deeds than men in these poor times of commerce, trade and toil have hearts to do; and, yet, from this fair dwelling--too vast, too finely wrought, to be a home--he uttered wondrous words, painting pictures that will never fade, and told, with every aid of art, old tales of love and war, sometimes beguiling men of tears, enchanting all with melody of speech, and sometimes rousing blood and planting seeds of high resolve and n.o.ble deeds; and sometimes thoughts were woven like tapestries in patterns beautiful, involved and strange, where dreams and fancies interlaced like tendrils of a vine, like harmonies that wander and return to catch the music of the central theme, yet cold as traceries in frost wrought on gla.s.s by winter's subtle art.

Tennyson was ingenious--Burns ingenuous. One was exclusive, and in his exclusiveness a little disdain. The other pressed the world against his heart.

Tennyson touched art on many sides, dealing with vast poetic themes, and satisfied in many ways the intellectual tastes of cultured men.

Tennyson is always perfectly self-possessed. He has poetic sympathy, but not the fire and flame. No one thinks of him as having been excited, as being borne away by pa.s.sion's storm. His pulse never rises. In artistic calm, he turns, polishes, perfects, embroiders and beautifies. In him there is nothing of the storm and chaos, nothing of the creative genius, no sea wrought to fury, filling the heavens with its shattered cry.

Burns dwelt with simple things--with those that touch the heart; that tell of joy; that spring from labor done; that lift the burdens of despair from fainting souls; that soften hearts until the pearls of pity fall from eyes unused to weep.

To ill.u.s.trate his thought, he used the things he knew--the things familiar to the world--not caring for the vanished things--the legends told by artful tongues to artless ears--but clinging to the common things of life and love and death, adorning them with countless gems; and, over all, he placed the bow of hope.

With him the man was greater than the king, the woman than the queen.

The greatest were the n.o.blest, and the n.o.blest were those who loved their fellow-men the best, the ones who filled their lives with generous deeds. Men admire Tennyson. Men love Robert Burns.

He was a believer in G.o.d, and had confidence that this G.o.d was sitting at the loom weaving with warp and woof of cause and effect, of fear and fancy, pain and hope, of dream and shadows, of despair and death, mingled with the light of love, the tapestries in which at last all souls will see that all was perfect from the first. He believed or hoped that the spirit of infinite goodness, soft as the autumn air, filled all of heaven's dome with love.

Such a religion is easy to understand when it includes all races through all times. It is consistent, if not with the highest thought, with the deepest and the tenderest feelings of the heart.

FROM CRADLE TO COFFIN.

There is no time to follow the steps of Burns from old Alloway, by the Bonnie Doon in the clay-built hut, where the January wind blew hansel in on Robin--to Mt. Oliphant, with its cold and stingy soil, the hard factor, whose letters made the children weep--working in the fields, or tired with "The thresher's weary flinging tree," where he was thrilled, for the first time with love's sweet pain that set his heart to music.

To Lochlea, still giving wings to thought--still working in the unproductive fields, Lochlea where his father died, and reached the rest that life denied.

To Mossgiel, where Burns reached the top and summit of his art and wrote like one enrapt, inspired. Here he met and loved and gave to immortality his Highland Mary.

To Edinburgh and fame, and back to Mauchline to Jean Armour and honor, the n.o.blest deed of all his life.

To Ellisland, by the winding Nith.

To Dumfries, a poor exciseman, wearing out his heart in the disgusting details of degrading drudgery--suspected of treason because he preferred Washington to Pitt--because he sympathized with the French Revolution--because he was glad that the American colonies had become a free nation.

At a banquet once, being asked to drink the health of Pitt, Burns said: "I will give you a better toast--George Washington." A little while after, when they wanted him to drink to the success of the English arms, Burns said: "No; I will drink this: May their success equal the justice of their cause." He sent three or four little cannon to the French Convention, because he sympathized with the French Revolution, and because of these little things, his love of liberty, of freedom and justice, at Dumfries he was suspected of being a traitor, and, as a result of these trivial things, as a result of that suspicion, Burns was obliged to join the Dumfries volunteers.

How pitiful that the author of "Scots wha hae with Wallace bled," should be thought an enemy of Scotland!

Poor Burns! Old and broken before his time--surrounded by the walking lumps of Dumfries' clay!

To appease the anger of his fellow-citizens--to convince them that he was a patriot, he actually joined the Dumfries volunteers,--bought his uniform on credit--amount about seven pounds--was unable to pay--was threatened with arrest and a jail by Matthew Penn.

These threats embittered his last hours.

A little while before his death, he said: "Do not let that awkward squad--the Dumfries volunteers--fire over my grave." We have a true insight into what his feelings were. But they fired. They were bound to fire or die.

The last words uttered by Robert Burns were these: "That d.a.m.ned scoundrel Matthew Penn."

Burns had another art, the art of ending--of stopping at the right place. Nothing is more difficult than this. It is hard to end a play--to get the right kind of roof on a house. Not one story-teller in a thousand knows just the spot where the rocket should explode. They go on talking after the stick has fallen.

Burns wrote short poems, and why? All great poems are short. There cannot be a long poem any more than there can be a long joke. I believe the best example of an ending perfectly accomplished you will find in his "Vision."

There comes into his house, into that "auld clay biggin," his muse, the spirit of a beautiful woman, and tells him what he can do, and what he can't do, as a poet. He has a long talk with her and now the thing is how to get her out of the house. You may think that it is an easy thing. It is easy to get yourself into difficulty, but not to get out.

I was struck with the beautiful manner in which Burns got that angel out of the house.

Nothing could be happier than the ending of the "Vision"--the leave-taking of the Muse:

"And wear thou this, she solemn said, And bound the holly round my head: The polished leaves and berries red Did rustling play; And, like a pa.s.sing thought she fled.

In light away."

How that man rose above all his fellows in death! Do you know, there is something wonderful in death. What a repose! What a piece of sculpture!

The common man dead looks royal; a genius dead, sublime.

When a few years ago I visited all the places where Burns had been, from the little house of clay with one room where he was born, to the little house with one room where he now sleeps, I thought of this. Yes, I visited them all, all the places made immortal by his genius, the field where love first touched his heart, the field where he ploughed up the home of the Mouse. I saw the cottage where Robert and Jean first lived as man and wife, and walked on "the banks and braes of Bonnie Doon."

And when I stood by his grave, I said: This man was a radical, a real genuine man. This man believed in the dignity of labor, in the n.o.bility of the useful. This man believed in human love, in making a heaven here, in judging men by their deeds instead of creeds and t.i.tles. This man believed in the liberty of the soul, of thought and speech. This man believed in the sacred rights of the individual; he sympathized with the suffering and oppressed. This man had the genius to change suffering and toil into song, to enrich poverty, to make a peasant feel like a prince of the blood, to fill the lives of the lowly with love and light. This man had the genius to make robes of glory out of squalid rags. This man had the genius to make Cleopatras, and Sapphos and Helens out of the freckled girls of the villages and fields--and he had the genius to make Auld Ayr, and Bonnie Doon, and Sweet Afton and the Winding Nith murmur the name of Robert Burns forever.

This man left a legacy of glory to Scotland and the whole world; he enriched our language, and with a generous hand scattered the gems of thought. This man was the companion of poverty, and wept the tears of grief, and yet he has caused millions to shed the happy tears of joy.

His heart blossomed in a thousand songs--songs for all times and all seasons--suited to every experience of the heart--songs for the dawn of love--for the glance and clasp and kiss of courtship--for "favors secret, sweet and precious"--for the glow and flame, the ecstasy and rapture of wedded life--songs of parting and despair--songs of hope and simple joy--songs for the vanished days--songs for birth and burial--songs for wild war's deadly blast, and songs for gentle peace--songs for the dying and the dead--songs for labor and content--songs for the spinning wheel, the sickle and the plow--songs for sunshine and for storm, for laughter and for tears--songs that will be sung as long as language lives and pa.s.sion sways the heart of man.

And when I was at his birth-place, at that little clay house where he was born, standing in that sacred place, I wrote these lines:

Though Scotland boasts a thousand names, Of patriot, king and peer, The n.o.blest, grandest of them all, Was loved and cradled here.

Here lived the gentle peasant-prince, The loving cotter-king, Compared with whom the greatest lord Is but a t.i.tled thing.

'Tis but a cot roofed in with straw, A hovel made of clay; One door shuts out the snow and storm, One window greets the day; And yet I stand within this room, And hold all thrones in scorn; For here beneath this lowly thatch, Love's sweetest bard was born.

Within this hallowed hut I feel Like one who clasps a shrine, When the glad lips at last have touched The something deemed divine.

And here the world through all the years, As long as day returns, The tribute of its love and tears, Will pay to Robert Burns.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

I.

ON the 12th of February, 1809, two babes were born--one in the woods of Kentucky, amid the hardships and poverty of pioneers; one in England, surrounded by wealth and culture. One was educated in the University of Nature, the other at Cambridge.