The Small Birds Rejoice
written in 1788
The Small Birds Rejoice - fact Summary
Advocates the Stuart Claim
The poem contrasts bright spring imagery with a speaker’s deep despair to underline political sorrow. Despite birds, flowers and returning green, the narrator cannot feel pleasure because he mourns the consequences of a failed political cause. Burns voices support for the exiled Stuart claimant and laments the suffering and ruined fortunes of loyal friends who fought for that right. The poem frames personal grief as inseparable from political allegiance, making natural renewal a painful backdrop to loss and loyalty.
Read Complete AnalysesThe small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning, The murmuring streamlet winds clear thro' the vale; The primroses blow in the dews of the morning, And wild-scattered cowslips bedeck the green dale: But what can give pleasure, or what can seem fair, When the lingering moments are numbered by Care? No birds sweetly singing, nor flowers gayly springing, Can soothe the sad bosom of joyless Despair. The deed that I dar'd, could it merit their malice, A king and a father to place on his throne; His right are these hills, and his right are these valleys, Where wild beasts find shelter but I can find none: But 'tis not my sufferings this wretched, forlorn, My brave gallant friends,' tis your ruin I mourn; Your faith proved so loyal in hot, bloody trial, Alas, can I make it no sweeter return!
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