To the Shade of Burns

By Charlotte Smith
Mute is thy wild harp, now, O Bard sublime!
   Who, amid Scotia’s mountain solitude,
Great Nature taught to “build the lofty rhyme,”
   And even beneath the daily pressure, rude,
Of laboring Poverty, thy generous blood,
Fired with the love of freedom—Not subdued
   Wert thou by thy low fortune: But a time
   Like this we live in, when the abject chime
Of echoing Parasite is best approved,
   Was not for thee—Indignantly is fled
Thy noble Spirit; and no longer moved
   By all the ills o’er which thine heart has bled,
   Associate worthy of the illustrious dead,
Enjoys with them “the Liberty it loved.”



Source: Norton Anthology of Poetry (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 2005)