Burns Day!

 

Tomorrow is Burns Day. That's the day when poetry enthusiasts around the world celebrate the national poet of Scotland, Robert Burns. Celebrants everywhere gather on the evening of January 25th for Burns Night dinners that feature whiskey toasts, traditional Scottish foods, and readings of Burns poems such as "O My luve is like a red red rose..."

This statue is on the elm-shaded Literary Walk in Central Park in New York City. Below is a very restrained list of some fragments of famous Burns poems, ending with my favorite.

"The best laid schemes o' Mice and Men,

Gang aft agley. 

And lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,

For promis'd joy!"...

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"O, wad some Power the gifte gie us

To see ourselves as others see us!

It wad frae monie a blunder free us, 

An' foolish notion."  ...

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"And man, whose heav'n-erected face

The smiles of love adorn

Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn!" ...

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"My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;

My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;

A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,

My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go." ...

 

Heather! Get your whiskey out! Click on the photos to enlarge.