A Red, Red Rose

Summary

A Red, Red Rose, also called My Luve Is Like a Red, Red Rose, is a song of four short stanzas that Burns sent for publication in 1794; it appeared in Pietro Urbani's collection and in The Scots Musical Museum in 1796. Like many of Burns's songs, it was built from fragments of older folk lyrics, which he reshaped into a single, perfect lyric. The speaker, a young man about to leave his love, begins with two similes: his love is like a red, red rose newly sprung in June, and like a melody sweetly played in tune. He tells her that as fair as she is, so deep in love is he, and that he will love her still till all the seas go dry. The third stanza expands the promise with images of geological time: till the seas go dry and the rocks melt with the sun, and while the sands of life shall run. The last stanza is a farewell: fare thee well, my only love, for a while; he will come again, even if it were ten thousand miles. The poem's power lies in its simplicity. Its images are the most familiar in love poetry, a rose, a tune, the sea, the sun, the sand, but Burns arranges them with such music and sincerity that they seem new. It is a poem of promise as much as of feeling: the speaker binds himself to faithfulness across time and distance. Students can study it as a model of the ballad stanza, of simile and hyperbole, and of the way folk tradition and individual art meet. It is clean and short, and it is one of the best poems for teaching younger students how sound and image work together in a lyric.

Top Lessons

• Faithful promises

  The poem is a vow: love that will outlast seas and rocks. Faithfulness is the substance of love.

• Simile and hyperbole

  Burns uses the simplest images and exaggerations. Clarity can be more powerful than novelty.

• Folk song and poet

  Burns built the song from older fragments. Tradition and individual craft work together.

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