Two
High Cliffs Near It Impend Over The Sea, Which Are Commonly Called The
Heads Of Ayr, And Not Far From These Stands A Fragment Of An Ancient
Castle.
I have sometimes wondered that born as Burns was in the
neighborhood of the sea, which I was told
Is often swelled into prodigious
waves by the strong west winds that beat on this coast, he should yet have
taken little if any of his poetic imagery from the ocean, either in its
wilder or its gentler moods. But his occupations were among the fields,
and his thoughts were of those who dwelt among them, and his imagination
never wandered where his feelings went not.
The monument erected to Burns, near the bridge, is an ostentatious thing,
with a gilt tripod on its summit. I was only interested to see some of the
relics of Burns which it contains, among which is the Bible given by him
to his Highland Mary. A road from the monument leads along the stream
among the trees to a mill, at a little distance above the bridge, where
the water passes under steep rocks, and I followed it. The wild rose and
the woodbine were in full bloom in the hedges, and these to me were a
better memorial of Burns than any thing which the chisel could execute. A
barefoot lassie came down the grassy bank among the trees with a pail, and
after washing her feet in the swift current filled the pail and bore it
again over the bank.
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