He lived more than once by the sea
for short periods, yet it appears but little in his verse, and then
usually as the great severing element.
And seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin auld lang syne
is the characteristic line. Scottish poetry had no tradition of the
sea. To England the sea had been the great boundary and defense
against the continental powers, and her naval achievements had long
produced a patriotic sentiment with regard to it which is reflected in
her literature. But Scotland's frontier had been the line of the
Cheviots and the Tweed, and save for a brief space under James IV she
had never been a sea-power. Thus the cruelty and danger of the sea are
almost the only phases prominent in her poetry, and Burns here once
more follows tradition.
Again, the scenery of Ayrshire was Lowland scenery, with pastoral
hills and valleys. On his Highland tours Burns saw and admired
mountains, but they too appear little in his verse. Though not an
unimportant figure in the development of natural description in
literature, he had not reached the modern deliberateness in the
seeking out of nature's beauties for worship or imitation, so that the
phases of natural beauty which we find in his poetry are merely those
which had unconsciously become fixed in a memory naturally retentive
of visual images.
Not only do his natural descriptions deal with the aspects familiar
to him in his ordinary surroundings, but they are for the most part
treated in relation to life.
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