John Russell

Agnes Brown

The spring birds sing, nor care if no one listen,
	The spring flowers open if the sun but shine,
The spring winds wander where the green buds glisten
	Through all the vale of Tyne.

And while, to music of the spring’s returning,
	Thy fair stream, Gifford, in the sunlight flows,
I, nursing tender thoughts, this sweet March morning.
	Stand where the dead repose.

The snow-drop on the grass-green turf is blowing.
	Its pure white chalice to the cold earth hung;
The crocus with its heart of fire is glowing
	As when old Homer sung.

And round me are the quaint-hewn gravestones, giving.
	With emblems rude, by generations read,
Their simple words of warning for the living,
	Of promise for the dead.

But not that mausoleum, huge and hoary.
	With elegiac marble, telling how
Its long-forgotten great ones died in glory,
	Has drawn me hither now.

Ah, no! with reverence meet from these I turn:
	They have what wealth could bring or love supply,
Like thousands such, who, born as they were born.
	Live, have their day, and die.

Let peace be theirs! It is a fairer meed,
	A more enduring halo of renown,
That glorifies this grave, o’er which I read
	The name of Agnes Brown.

A peasant name, befitting peasant tongue:
	How lives it longer than an autumn noon?
’Twas hers, the mother of the bard who sung
	The banks and braes of Doon.

Here in this alien ground her ashes lie,
	Far from her native haunts on Carrick shore.
Far from where first she felt a mother’s joy
	O’er the brave child she bore.

Ah, who can tell the thoughts that on her prest.
	As o’er his cradle-hed she bent in bliss.
Or gave from the sweet fountains of her breast
	The life that nourished his.

Perhaps in prescient vision came to her
	Some shadowings of the glory yet afar—
Of that fierce storm, whence rose, serene and clear,
	His never-setting star.

But dreamt she ever, as she sang to still
	His infant heart in slumber sweet and long.
That he who silent lay the while, should fill
	Half the round world with song?

Yet so he filled it; and she lived to see
	The singer, chapleted with laurel, stand.
Upon his lips that wondrous melody
	Which thrilled his native land.

She saw, too, when had passed the singer’s breath,
	A nation’s proud heart throbbing at his name,
Forgetting, in the pitying light of death,
	Whatever was of blame.

Oh, may we hope she heard not, even afar.
	The screamings of that vulture-brood who tear
The heart from out the dead, and meanly mar
	The fame they may not share!

Who would not wish that her long day’s decline
	Had peacefullest setting, uiisuffused with tears.
Who bore to Scotland him, our Bard divine.
	Immortal as the years?

He sleeps among the eternal; nothing mars
	His rest, nor ever pang to him returns;
Write, too, her epitaph among the stars.
	Mother of Robert Burns.