C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

From ‘The Tomb of Burns’

NOT ours to gauge the more or less,

The will’s defect, the blood’s excess,

The earthy humors that oppress

The radiant mind.

His greatness, not his littleness,

Concerns mankind.

A dreamer of the common dreams,

A fisher in familiar streams,

He chased the transitory gleams

That all pursue;

But on his lips the eternal themes

Again were new.

With shattering ire or withering mirth

He smote each worthless claim to worth;

The barren fig-tree cumbering earth

He would not spare;

Through ancient lies of proudest birth

He drove his share.

To him the Powers that formed him brave,

Yet weak to breast the fatal wave,

A mighty gift of Hatred gave,—

A gift above

All other gifts benefic, save

The gift of Love.

He saw ’tis meet that Man possess

The will to curse as well as bless,

To pity—and be pitiless,

To make, and mar;

The fierceness that from tenderness

Is never far.

And so his fierce and tender strain

Lives, and his idlest words remain

To flout oblivion, that in vain

Strives to destroy

One lightest record of his pain

Or of his joy.