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"Man was made to mourn" is an eleven stanza [[dirge]] by [[Robert Burns]] first published in 1784.<ref name="Burns">{{cite web |author=Robert Burns |author-link=Robert Burns |year=2005 |title=Burns Country |url=http://www.robertburns.org/works/55.shtml |accessdate=13 November 2009 |work='Man was made to mourn: A Dirge' |publisher=robertburns.org}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Leask |first=Nigel |date=2010-06-24 |title=Pastoral Politics |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/6405/chapter/150185374 |journal=Robert Burns and Pastoral: Poetry and Improvement in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland |language=en |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572618.003.0005}}</ref> The poem was originally intended to be sung to the tune of the song "[[Peggy Bawn]]". It is written as if it were being delivered by a wiser old man to a "young stranger" standing in the winter on "the banks of Aire".<ref name=":0" /> It includes the stanza:<ref name="Burns" />
Many and sharp the num'rous ills<br />
Inwoven with our frame!<br />
More pointed still we make ourselves<br />
Regret, remorse, and shame!<br />
And man, whose heav'n-erected face<br />
The smiles of love adorn, – <br />
Man's inhumanity to man<br />
Makes countless thousands mourn!
== Analysis ==
Burns based the poem on the song "[[The Age and Life of Man]]", a [[ballad]] that dated to the 17th century. He later said he had heard his mother sing the song.<ref name=":0" />
The scholar [[Nigel Leask]] writes that the poem includes "surprisingly contemporary themes," noting its "lament for the harshness and brevity of human life" and direct criticism of "hundreds labour[ing] to support / a haughty lordling's pride." It does not offer these poor hope, emphasizing the negative sentiment that "man was made to mourn." Leask also notes that the poem supports a [[right to work]] by criticizing a lord who will not hire a former farmer looking for work.<ref name=":0" />
Burns initially wrote the poem in response to pervasive "economic and social injustices" in society.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Roth |first=Hans Ingvar |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NM9tDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA159&dq=%22Man's+inhumanity+to+man%22+idiom+burns&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirk4De6KT6AhU_hYkEHV39ABoQ6AF6BAgDEAI#v=onepage&q=%22Man's%20inhumanity%20to%20man%22%20idiom%20burns&f=false |title=P. C. Chang and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights |date=2018-09-10 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |isbn=978-0-8122-9547-4 |pages=159 |language=en}}</ref> It was well-received. Scholar Carol McGuirk describes the poem and "[[Despondency, An Ode]]" as serving as a touchstone "for later poets in and out of Scotland."<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=McGuirk |first=Carol |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-C47CgAAQBAJ&pg=PT216 |title=Reading Robert Burns: Texts, Contexts, Transformations |date=2015-10-06 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-31734-0 |language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|page=68}} However, in the years since its publication, the poem has been more broadly applied to wars and genocides.<ref name=":1" />
=="Man's inhumanity to man"==
It is possible that Burns reworded a similar quote from [[Samuel von Pufendorf]] who in 1673 wrote, "More inhumanity has been done by man himself than any other of nature's causes."{{Cn|date=September 2022}} In 1798 the English poet [[William Wordsworth]] adapted it in his ''[[Lines Written in Early Spring]]''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dabundo |first=Laura |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KMeOAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA68 |title=Encyclopedia of Romanticism (Routledge Revivals): Culture in Britain, 1780s-1830s |date=2009-10-15 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-23235-1 |pages=68 |language=en}}</ref>
The line "man's inhumanity to man" has been widely quoted since Burns' poem was first published, in reference to wars, mistreatment of indigenous people and nations, and, according to historian Mark Celinscak, other "acts of extreme violence".<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Celinscak |first=Mark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3LnwCgAAQBAJ |title=Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp |date=2015-01-01 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-1-4426-1570-0 |pages=11 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Hughey |first=Michael W. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=alTeCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA55 |title=New Tribalisms: The Resurgence of Race and Ethnicity |date=2016-03-29 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-349-26403-2 |pages=55 |language=en}}</ref> It is still broadly associated with Burns' poem.<ref name=":1" /> Celinscak writes that the phrase has become [[wikt:Banal|banal]] due to "decades of overuse", noting that it was commonly used to describe the [[Bergen-Belsen concentration camp]] during World War II.<ref name=":3" /> The line was cited six times by [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] in his autobiography.<ref name=":2" />
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