Robert Burns acknowledged his debt to the tragic Robert Fergusson, paid for his gravestone, and wrote affectingly about him. Both poets (and Robert Louis Stevenson) are saluted in a “Three Rabbies” ceremony in Edinburgh’s Canongate Kirk-yard today at 11am. Here is Burns on Fergusson.
EPITAPH
And other lines on Fergusson
No sculptur’d marble here, nor pompous lay,
‘No story’d urn nor animated bust’;
This simple stone directs pale Scotia’s way
To pour her sorrow o’er her poet’s dust…
O thou, my elder brother in Misfortune,
By far my elder Brother in the muse,
With tears I pity thy unhappy fate!
Why is the Bard unfitted for the world,
Yet has so keen a relish of its Pleasures…
Ill-fated Genius! Heaven-taught Fergusson,
What heart that feels and will not yield a tear,
To think Life’s sun did set e’er well begun
To shed its influence on thy bright career.
O why should truest Worth and Genius pine,
Beneath the iron grasp of Want and Woe,
While titled knaves and idiot-greatness shine
In all the splendour Fortune can bestow?
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