Burns

One of the Somme memorials - we saw so many that I've forgotten which one - had a quote from Robert Burns on it. It was one I didn't recognise, and I forgot to take notes ("Always take notes," I tell workshops). So I've had a bother tracking it down. It was, I thought, not characteristic of our national bard, and quite certainly not among his best known. The line I remember included something about a tyrant, though, and in the new selected poetry and prose - The Best Laid Schemes, edited by Robert Crawford and Christopher Maclachlan - I think I've maybe found it.

It's in a poem called 'Ode for General Washington's Birthday', written in 1794, and the lines on the memorial are, I think:

Dare injured nations form the great design
To make detested tyrants bleed?

It's actually a stunning poem, forthrightly republican in tone, and the last line is worth quoting too:

That palsied arm no more whirls on the waste of war.

and I find that resonates with me. As does this little poem I found in a Burns archive (it's not in the 'selected'):


Thanksgiving for a national victory

Ye hypocrites! are these your pranks?
To murder men and give God thanks!
Desist, for shame!-proceed no further;
God won't accept your thanks for Murther!

Robert Burns, 1793