But I have recently, thanks to the wonderful Library Thing Early reviewers programme, fallen in love with the poetry of Robert Burns through Andrew O'Hagan's excellent book A Night Out with Robert Burns. Being English, and southern English at that, Burns has always been, to me, a bit of a sentimental Scottish cliche - there's a drunken Scotsman who always seems to be staggering through St Martin's Lane, muttering "A Red Red Rose" when I'm on my way home, which is in itself a testament to Scottish education as the average drunken Englishman can at best manage, "Come on show us your tits" - and don't get me started on "Auld Lang Syne".Burns is much more than this, he was a political poet, just read this, which O'Hagan puts into context with an extract from an MOD release announcing the death of a 19 year old Highland Fusilier in Basra in 2004:
I Murder Hate
I murder hate by field or flood,
Tho' glory's name may screen us;
In wars at home I'll spend my blood,
Life giving wards of Venus;
The deities that I adore
Are social Peace and Plenty;
I'm better pleased to make one more,
Than be the death of twenty.-
I would not die like Socrates,
For all the fuss of Plato;
Nor would I with Leonadas,
Nor yet I would with Cato:
The Zealots of the Church, or State,
Shall ne'er my mortal foes be,
But let me have bold ZIMRI's fate,
Within the arms of COSBI!-
