Burnsiana, Vol. 2
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| Stand: | 2015-08-04 03:50:33 |
Produktbeschreibung
Excerpt from Burnsiana, Vol. 2: A Collection of Literary Odds and Ends Relating to Robert Burns Delivered before the Burns Club of New York at the Centennial Birth-day of the Poet, Tuesday Jan.25, 1859. I Come upon your invitation, gentlemen of the Burns Club, friends and fellow-citizens, to celebrate with one half of the civilized world, and with the whole world of letters, the birth of a farmers boy, who became a ploughman, a flax-dresser, an exciseman and gauger, and who was reputed also to have become a poet. One hundred years ago, January 25th, 1759, Agnes Brown Burness gave to the world her son, Robert Burns. The father and mother were Scotch. The son only took Scotland on his way into the whole world. While we allow Scotchman suitable national pride in their chief poet, we cannot allow the world to be robbed of their right and interest in Burns. And yet there never was born to that land, so fertile in men, a truer Scotchman; and it is the peculiar admiration and glory of the man, that in spite of obscurity, bred to all the local influences, Scotch in bone, in muscle, in culture, and in dialect, he rose higher than the special and national, and achieved his glory in those elements which unite mankind, and make all nations of one blood. While men of science are groping about the signs of eternal man, and debating the origin and unity of races, a poet strikes the fundamental chords, and all races, peoples, and tongues hear, understand, and agree; so that the poet is, after all, the true ethnologist. The human heart is his harp, and he who knows how to touch that with skill, belongs to no country, can be shut in by no language, nor sequestered by any age. He belongs to the world and to the race. The father of Burns, William Burness - the poet contracted the name when he published his first volume - was a genuine man in his way. He had a head, and a heart, and a pair of hands, all of which were kept exceedingly busy in prolonging a desperate fight for life and comfort. He was a man of stern probity, of the deepest religious convictions, and of an indomitable will. He expected much of all his family, but was sterner with himself than with any other. His only amusement was speculative theology, but that did not injure his morals, for he was a man of scrupulous integrity to the last, clean to the very fountain of honour; yet was irascible, and when unduly thwarted, violent in temper. He held up his head like a brave swimmer in a rough sea, until the waves fairly beat him down. William Burness never prospered. His son says of him: "Stubborn, ungainly integrity, and headlong, ungovernable irascibility, are disqualifying circumstances in the path of fortune." It is not the rigour of integrity which stands in any man´s way. It is the indiscriminate stiffening of everything by the rigour of pride saturated with conscience; for God has built the human form to combine the utmost stiffness with the utmost litheness. There are bones for stiffness, and there are joints for limberness. So with the character. It is to be built upon the sternest elements of truth and justice, but somewhere there must be litheness and pliableness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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