Searching for the Infinite

Robert Burns was a widely heralded poet and lyricist (1759-1796), considered by many as the National Poet of Scotland. Burns’ poems continue to be read around the world and many have been put to song, including “Auld Lang Syne” and “Sweet Afton”. 

A pioneer of the Romantic movement, Burns chafed at the rationalist Calvinism of his native country throughout his life, while never giving up faith in God. In this personal letter, Burns ponders the impact of nature on his emotions, specifically the seasons, and whether or not these reactions indicate something deeper of this world, something akin to the reality of divine presence.

I have some favorite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain daisy, the foxglove, the wild-brier rose and the hoary hawthorne, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never heard the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? 

Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the Aeolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities—a God that made all things, man’s immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of weal (prosperity) or woe beyond death and the grave.