But Burns is as vivid and variable as Nature, and at full power in a wide variety of domains and achievements. Within the domain of Song alone (his peculiar and unquestioned kingdom) his variety is almost as astonishing as his wealth. All the moods of love especially are his: the wistful subjection of soul in _Mary Morison_, the lover’s complaint against fortune and the world in _Poortith Cauld_, or against the harder fate of a mistress’s disdain in _Maun I still on Menie doat_ (these two with exquisite touches of humour on the way!); the grief of parting in _Ae Fond Kiss_, with its unutterable regret, and in _Go, Bring to Me_ with the tumult of the future sounding in it; or again, love’s sense of its own nobility and security rising even above that grief in _My Love is Like a Red Red Rose_ (the greatest love song, which is really a _song_, in literature), or the glossing preoccupation of the enamoured heart, to which every natural beauty is but an illustration and reminder, in _Of a’ the Airts_ (than which there is nothing in the world of song more single, perfect and sincere), or the unanswerable argument of maidens’ reasons when they love in _Tam Glen_ and _The Gallant Weaver_, or the comedy of courtship in _Duncan Gray_ and _Last May a Braw Wooer_, and whatever of joyous and equivocal there might be in the idyll of _Duncan Davison_, so realistic and so reticent. These are but samples of a stock to which only a long catalogue would do representative justice. The reader will at once think of _The Rigs of Barley_ so triumphant and _The Lea Rig_ so trusting, and of _Bonnie Doon_, with the sadness which has ensued from such trust—how often!—and of the echoing _Fareweel to Ballochmyle_ with its atmosphere so large and lonely. But beyond these there is another order of love-song; of the love that has stood the test of life and has increased in kindness as it has emerged from passion. Here we think of _John Anderson, my Jo_, a song for which every good man must bow his head to the memory of Burns. And near to it will be found in these pages a lyric with the same consecration—_The Cardin’ o’t_—not less perfect though less known. It summarises the human epic as lowly and kind folk know it, and is like “the still sad music of humanity,” telling of its affections, its toils, and the little wrongs that mean so much. And beyond these, again, there is another order of love song, in which the destinies enacted or the sorrows endured seem outside the limits of the world. Of this disembodied and metaphysical quality—rare in all literature outside of Shakespeare—are _Open the Door to Me, Oh_, in which we feel the presence of Nature and Time only as spectators of a human woe; and _Ay Waukin’_, with its haunting repetition, its immeasurable sense of want and waiting, and of the endless desolation that there may be for the soul within one summer day. But of the songs of Burns it is impossible to speak adequately, and I have spoken only of the love songs.