Even the three lines indicating what waits the
hero at home is an adequate picture. Though incidental, these
vignettes add substantially to what the descriptive poems have told us
of the environment, real and imaginative, in which the poet had been
reared.
The value of the reflective element is more mixed. The most quoted
passage, that beginning
"But pleasures are like poppies spread,"
can only be regretted. With its literacy similes, its English, its
artificial diction, it is a patch of cheap silk upon honest homespun.
But the other pieces of interspersed comment are all admirable. The
ironic apostrophes--to Tam for neglecting his wife's warnings; to
shrewish wives, consoling them for their husband's deafness to advice;
to John Barleycorn, on the transient courage he inspires; to Tam
again, when tragedy seems imminent--are all in perfect tone, and do
much to add the element of drollery that mixes so delightfully with
the weirdness of the scene. And like the other elements in the poem
they are commendably short, for Burns nearly always fulfills
Bagehot's requirement that poetry should be "memorable and emphatic,
intense, and _soon over_."
TAM O' SHANTER
A TALE
Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this Buke.
GARVIN DOUGLAS.
When chapman billies leave the street, [pedlar fellows]
And drouthy neibors neibors meet, [thirsty]
As market-days are wearing late,
An' folk begin to tak the gate; [road]
While we sit bousing at the nappy, [ale]
An' getting fou and unco happy, [full, mighty]
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles, [bogs, gaps]
That lie between us and our hame,
Where sits our sulky sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.
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