These threats embittered his last hours. A little while before his death, he said: "Do not let that awkward squad--the Dumfries volunteers--fire over my grave." We have a true insight into what his feelings were. But they fired. They were bound to fire or die. The last words uttered by Robert Burns were these: "That damned scoundrel Matthew Penn." Burns had another art, the art of ending--of stopping at the right place. Nothing is more difficult than this. It is hard to end a play--to get the right kind of roof on a house. Not one story-teller in a thousand knows just the spot where the rocket should explode. They go on talking after the stick has fallen. Burns wrote short poems, and why? All great poems are short. There cannot be a long poem any more than there can be a long joke. I believe the best example of an ending perfectly accomplished you will find in his "Vision." There comes into his house, into that "auld clay biggin," his muse, the spirit of a beautiful woman, and tells him what he can do, and what he can't do, as a poet. He has a long talk with her and now the thing is how to get her out of the house. You may think that it is an easy thing. It is easy to get yourself into difficulty, but not to get out. I was struck with the beautiful manner in which Burns got that angel out of the house. Nothing could be happier than the ending of the "Vision"--the leave-taking of the Muse: "And wear thou this, she solemn said, And bound the holly round my head: The polished leaves and berries red Did rustling play; And, like a passing thought she fled. In light away." How that man rose above all his fellows in death! Do you know, there is something wonderful in death. What a repose! What a piece of sculpture! The common man dead looks royal; a genius dead, sublime.