"
Bad fortune, too, followed Burns. The shop in which he was
engaged was set on fire, and he was left "like a true poet, not
worth a sixpence."
So leaving the troubles and temptations of Irvine behind, he
carried home a smirched name to his father's house.
Here, too, troubles were gathering. Bad harvests were followed
by money difficulties, and, weighed down with all his cares,
William Burns died. The brothers had already taken another farm
named Mossgiel. Soon after the father's death the whole family
went to live there.
Robert meant to settle down and be a regular farmer. "Come, go
to, I will be wise," he said. He read farming books and bought a
little diary in which he meant to write down farming notes. But
the farming notes often turned out to be scraps of poetry.
The next four years of Burns's life were eventful years, for
though he worked hard as he guided the plow or swung the scythe,
he wove songs in his head. And as he followed his trade year in
year out, from summer to winter, from winter to summer, he
learned all the secrets of the earth and sky, of the hedgerow and
the field.
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