The one was the
poet of the aristocracy; the other the genius whose sympathies were with
the poor. One was most at home in the palaces of the great; and the other,
in the rude Ayrshire cottage, or in the little sitting-room of the
landlord in company with Souter John and Tam O'Shanter. As to most of his
poems, Burns was really of no distinct school, but seems to stand alone,
the creature of circumstance rather than of the age, in an unnatural and
false position, compared by himself to the daisy he uprooted with his
ploughshare:
Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate,
That fate is thine--no distant date;
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate,
Full on thy bloom,
Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight
Shall be thy doom!
His life was uneventful. He was the son of a very poor man who was
gardener to a gentleman at Ayr. He was born in Alloway on the 25th of
January, 1759. His early education was scanty; but he read with avidity
the few books on which he could lay his hands, among which he particularly
mentions, in his short autobiography, _The Spectator_, the poems of Pope,
and the writings of Sterne and Thomson.
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