Epistle To Hugh Parker

by Robert Burns — a poem card from Justes Mots

Burns writes from rural isolation to Hugh Parker, expressing homesickness and creative depression in a desolate landscape. He laments separation from literary fellowship and the loss of poetic inspiration, personifying his mare Jenny as his only companion. A poignant epistle on exile and artistic longing.

In this strange land, this uncouth clime,
A land unknown to prose or rhyme;
Where words ne’er cross’t the Muse’s heckles,
Nor limpit in poetic shackles:
A land that Prose did never view it,
Except when drunk he stacher’t thro’ it;
Here, ambush’d by the chimla cheek,
Hid in an atmosphere of reek,…

Themes: sympathy · grief · friendship · reflection