No other light shall guide my steps
Till thy bright beams arise.

She, the fair sun of all her sex,
Has blest my glorious day;
And shall a glimmering planet fix
My worship to its ray?


4. Ellisland

In the spring of 1788 when Burns married Jean Armour, he took two
other steps of the first importance for his future career. The
Edinburgh period had come and gone, and all that his intercourse with
his influential friends had brought him was the four or five hundred
pounds of profit from his poems and an opportunity to enter the excise
service. With part of the money he relieved his brother Gilbert from
pressing obligations at Mossgiel by the loan of one hundred and eighty
pounds, and with the rest leased the farm of Ellisland on the bank of
the Nith, five or six miles above Dumfries. But before taking up the
farm he devoted six weeks or so to tuition in the duties of an
exciseman, so that he had this occupation to fall back on in case of
another farming failure. During the summer he superintended the
building of the farm-house, and in December Jean joined her husband.
His satisfaction in his domestic situation is characteristically
expressed in a song composed about this time.


I HAE A WIFE