After last week's series of Burns poems, showing something of his wonderful scope and humanity, here is an extract from William Wordsworth's tribute to his older contemporary.
His image of Burns may be too close to that of the "heaven-taught ploughman" that Burns himself cultivated (he was well educated), but the generosity of Wordsworth's admiration shines through.
AT THE GRAVE OF BURNS
(1803 - Seven Years After His Death)
Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth
He sang, his genius "glinted" forth,
Rose like a star that touching earth,
For so it seems,
Doth glorify its humble birth
With matchless beams.
The piercing eye, the thoughtful brow,
The struggling heart, where be they now?
Full soon the Aspirant of the plough,
The prompt, the brave,
Slept, with the obscurest, in the low
And silent grave.
I mourned with thousands, but as one
More deeply grieved, for He was gone
Whose light I hailed when first it shone,
And showed my youth
How Verse may build a princely throne
On humble truth.
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