Nonfiction > Ralph Waldo Emerson > The Complete Works
Vol. XI. Miscellanies
XXII. Robert Burns
Speech Delivered at the Celebration of the Burns Centenary, Boston
January 25, 1859

  “HIS was the music to whose tone
  The common pulse of man keeps time
In cot or castle’s mirth or moan,
  In cold or sunny clime.
Praise to the bard! his words are driven,
  Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown,
Where’er, beneath the sky of heaven,
  The birds of fame have flown.”

  In order for this destiny, his birth, breeding and fortunes were low. His organic sentiment was absolute independence, and resting as it should on a life of labor. No man existed who could look down on him. They that looked into his eyes saw that they might look down the sky as easily. 2 His muse and teaching was common sense, joyful, aggressive, irresistible. Not Latimer, nor Luther struck more telling blows against false theology than did this brave singer. The Confession of Augsburg, the Declaration of Independence, the French Rights of Man, and the Marseillaise, are not more weighty documents in the history of freedom than the songs of Burns. His satire has lost none of its edge. His musical arrows yet sing through the air. He is so substantially a reformer that I find his grand plain sense in close chain with the greatest masters,—Rabelais, Shakspeare in comedy, Cervantes, Butler, and Burns. If I should add another name, I find it only in a living countryman of Burns. 3  2
  He is an exceptional genius. The people who care nothing for literature and poetry care for Burns. It was indifferent—they thought who saw him—whether he wrote verse or not: he could have done anything else as well. Yet how true a poet is he! And the poet, too, of poor men, of gray hodden and the guernsey coat and the blouse. He has given voice to all the experiences of common life; he has endeared the farmhouse and cottage, patches and poverty, beans and barley; ale, the poor man’s wine; hardship; the fear of debt; the dear society of weans and wife, of brothers and sisters, proud of each other, knowing so few and finding amends for want and obscurity in books and thoughts. 4 What a love of Nature, and, shall I say it? of middle-class Nature. Not like Goethe, in the stars, or like Byron, in the ocean, or Moore, in the luxurious East, but in the homely landscape which the poor see around them,—bleak leagues of pasture and stubble, ice and sleet and rain and snow-choked brooks; birds, hares, field-mice, thistles and heather, which he daily knew. How many “Bonny Doons” and “John Anderson my jo’s” and “Auld lang synes” all around the earth have his verses been applied to! And his love-songs still woo and melt the youths and maids; the farm-work, the country holiday, the fishing-cobble are still his debtors to-day.  3
Note 1. It is pleasant to be able to let Dr. Holmes, who was present at the Burns Festival, speak for himself and Lowell and Judge Hoar of Mr. Emerson’s speech on that day. I have heard the Judge tell the story of his friend’s success with the same delight.
  “On the 25th of January, 1859, Emerson attended the Burns Festival, held at the Parker House in Boston, on the Centennial Anniversary of the poet’s birth. He spoke, after the dinner, to the great audience with such beauty and eloquence that all who listened to him have remembered it as one of the most delightful addresses they ever heard. Among his hearers was Mr. Lowell, who says of it that ‘every word seemed to have just dropped down to him from the clouds.’ Judge Hoar, who was another of his hearers, says that, though he has heard many of the chief orators of his time, he never witnessed such an effect of speech upon men. I was myself present on that occasion, and underwent the same fascination that these gentlemen and the varied audience before the speaker experienced. His words had a passion in them not usual in the calm, pure flow most natural to his uttered thoughts; white-hot iron we are familiar with, but white-hot silver is what we do not often look upon, and his inspiring address glowed like silver fresh from the cupel.”
  The strange part of all the accounts given by the hearers is that Mr. Emerson seemed to speak extempore, which can hardly have been so.
  No account of the Festival, or Mr. Emerson’s part therein, appears in the journals, except a short page of praise of the felicitous anecdotes introduced by other after-dinner speakers. [back]
Note 2. Here comes out that respect for labor which affected all Mr. Emerson’s relations to the humblest people he met. In the Appendix to the Poems it appears in the verses beginning,—
  Said Saadi, When I stood before
Hassan the camel-driver’s door.
Note 3. Thomas Carlyle. [back]
Note 4. Mr. Emerson here recalls his childhood and that of his brothers, as in the passage in “Domestic Life,” in Society and Solitude, that has been often referred to in these notes. [back]
Note 5. Among some stray lecture-sheets was the following on the scholar or poet:—
  “Given the insight, and he will find as many beauties and heroes and strokes of genius close by him as Dante or Shakspeare beheld. It was in a cold moor farm, in a dingy country inn, that Burns found his fancy so sprightly. You find the times and places mean. Stretch a few threads over an Æolian harp, and put it in the window and listen to what it says of the times and of the heart of Nature. You shall not believe the miracle of Nature is less, the chemical power worn out. Watch the breaking morning, or the enchantments of the sunset.” [back]
