He took a farm a few miles from Dumfries,
and although since he had been parted from his Jean he had
forgotten her time and again and made love to many another, he
and she were now married, this time in good truth. From now
onward it was that Burns wrote some of his most beautiful songs,
and it is for his songs that we remember him. Some of them are
his own entirely, and some are founded upon old songs that had
been handed on for generations by the people from father to son,
but had never been written down until Burns heard them and saved
them from being forgotten. But in every case he left the song a
far more beautiful thing than he found it. None of them perhaps
is more beautiful than that he now wrote to his Jean--
"Of a' the airts* the wind can blaw,
I dearly like the wet,
For there the bonnie lassie lives,
The lassie I lo'e best:
The wild-woods grow and rivers row,**
And mony a hill between;
But day and night my fancy's flight
Is ever wi' my Jean.
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