After spending a brilliant winter in Edinburgh, Burns set off on several tours through his native land, visiting many of the places famous in Scottish history.  But, as the months went on, he began to be restless in his seeming idleness.  The smiles of the great world would not keep hunger from the door; he feared that his fame might be only a nine days’ wonder, so he decided to return to his farming.  He took a farm a few miles from Dumfries, and although since he had been parted from his Jean he had forgotten her time and again and made love to many another, he and she were now married, this time in good truth.  From now onward it was that Burns wrote some of his most beautiful songs, and it is for his songs that we remember him.  Some of them are his own entirely, and some are founded upon old songs that had been handed on for generations by the people from father to son, but had never been written down until Burns heard them and saved them from being forgotten.  But in every case he left the song a far more beautiful thing than he found it.  None of them perhaps is more beautiful than that he now wrote to his Jean—­

    “Of a’ the airts* the wind can blaw,
        I dearly like the wet,
    For there the bonnie lassie lives,
        The lassie I lo’e best: 
    The wild-woods grow and rivers row,**
        And mony a hill between;
    But day and night my fancy’s flight
        Is ever wi’ my Jean.

    “I see her in the dewy flowers,
        I see her sweet and fair: 
    I hear her in the tunefu’ birds,
        I hear her charm the air;
    There’s not a bonnie flower that springs
        By fountain, shaw,*** or green,
    There’s not a bonnie bird that sings
        But minds me o’ my Jean.”

    Directions.
    *Roll.
    ***Wood.

But farming and song-making did not seem to go together, and on his new farm Burns succeeded little better than on any that he had tried before.  He thought to add to his livelihood by turning an excise man, that is, an officer whose work is to put down smuggling, to collect the duty on whisky, and to see that none upon which duty has not been paid is sold.  One of his fine Edinburgh friends got an appointment for him, and he began his duties, and it would seem fulfilled them well.  But this mode of life was for Burns a failure.  In discharge of his duties he had to ride hundreds of miles in all kinds of weathers.  He became worn out by the fatigue of it, and it brought him into the temptation of drinking too much.  Things went with him from bad to worse, and at length he died at the age of thirty-six, worn out by toil and sin and suffering.

In many ways his was a misspent life “at once unfinished and a ruin."* His was the poet’s soul bound in the body of clay.  He was an unhappy man, and we cannot but pity him, and yet remember him with gratitude for the beautiful songs he gave us.  In his own words we may say—­