Mirror of Literature,  11 (1828), 326–27.

Robert Burns. New Year's Letter, Addressed by Burns to Mrs. Dunlop

Anon

Genre:

Extract, Letter

Publications extracted:

Robert Burns

Subjects:

Botany, Ornithology, Feeling, Machinery, Natural Theology, Immaterialism, Immortality


    Burns relates that certain flowers and birds evoke strong feelings in him. Observes: 'Are we are a piece of machinery, which, like the Æolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clay? 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 or woe beyond death and the grave' (327).



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