England—and probably most countries—have no match for Rabbie Burns (1759-1796), a ploughman who produced great poems of both roistering gaiety and still beauty. All his poems, says Clive James in The Fire of Joy, are a dance—from the Eightsome Reel to the Strathspey. John Clare is perhaps the English poet who comes closest to Burns, but he doesn’t have the swashbuckling poems that Burns has.

The poem below is a poem from within a poem. I’ve extracted it from Tam o’ Shanter, a long wild poem that I must have read and enjoyed 20 times without ever understanding it fully. The long poem is filled with Scots words but this poem about transience is in plain English—apart perhaps from Nae, but little intelligence is needed to translate that word. The extract is a poem of stillness within a poem of drunkenness and mad activity. We all have such still moments in our lives.

Nae man can tether time or tide by Rabbie Burns

But pleasures are like poppies spread,

You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;

Or like the snow falls in the river,

A moment white—then melts for ever;

Or like the borealis race,

That flit ere you can point the place;

Or like the rainbow’s lovely form

Evanishing amid the storm.—

Nae man can tether time or tide.