Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn

Burns sets the scene on Lugar banks while he is bent under the weight of his grief at his Lordship's untimely end. Burns sees himself tuning his lyre, slumped tearfully against an ancient oak, the whole atmosphere filled with grief and decay.

He then contrasts the renewal that nature will follow in due course to the relics of growth but nothing will renew his downcast spirit. He compares himself to an aged tree whose roots have been torn from the earth by a terrible storm never to grow again. His is a wandering lonely soul in an unknown land, left to bear his grief in solitude.

Burns is still grieving for the man who was a power for good in the land. The light has gone out of Burns's life, leaving him feeling old and mortified. He calls forth his poetic powers for just one more soaring tribute to his dead friend.

Lastly, he looks back to his past of poverty and obscurity from which Glencairn raised him. ‘Why should the good die young while villains prosper,’ he asks. Burns regrets outliving his friend and describes certain memorable happenings which might be forgotten before he could ever forget James, Earl of Glencairn.

Glencairn, who had been a fan of the Kilmarnock Edition of Burns's poems, greeted Burns shortly after his arrival in Edinburgh in November 1787. Glencairn introduced Burns to Creech the publisher and encouraged the Caledonian Hunt members to subscribe to the second edition. Burns saw Glencairn as his 'Titular protector' and named his third son after him.