By Tyler Bell

“A Red, Red Rose”

O my Luve is like a red, red rose
   That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
   That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
   So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
   Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
   And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
   While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
   And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
   Though it were ten thousand mile.

— Robert Burns

Love, the human pursuit that feels impossible to understand but is the most familiar feeling in the world. We grow up enveloped by it or devoid of it. We pursue it our whole lives or we abandon the pursuit. Love is a fleeting moment and an eternal emotion, one that never dies, never fades, and will stand alongside time. These two concepts of love and eternity are captured here by Robert Burns in the poem A Red, Red Rose, a poem of magnitude that speaks beyond the individuals, but speaks directly to each individual, especially me.

Depending on who you ask, a college student doesn’t understand love. They are too young and have not felt the maelstrom of emotions that is love. And what little they understand about love they understand less about eternity. Full of life and energy, eternity shouldn’t even be on their radar. However, I stand as a senior in college on the edge of my eternity. The only life I have known is a life of academia. From the moment I could speak well enough to converse I was in preschool and every year since I have spent the majority of a year devoted to academics. Beyond this year, as graduate school is not in the cards, I enter into the unknown, for the rest of my life. Now I will learn and evolve as time passes and come to understand this unknown but even as I do I will still be in the endless cycle of love’s pursuit as Burns’ poem describes. 

The poem isn’t too long, only four stanzas but it tells the story of a fresh love, blooming in spring, that is sweet and pleasant and, while fragile, will stand the test of time. Burns’ language within the last line of stanza two through stanza four explores the idea of what is called ‘Deep Time,’that seemingly infinite amount of time, tied to an event or action. The event being the melting of the rocks and the drying of the seas. Burns’s speaker is confessing their eternal love that has newly grown in their heart. Now while this is the general plot of the poem, its themes give it a deeper meaning

Love and eternity spill over into the themes but they take on a new form. The love that the poet has is fresh. In a fragile state like a newly bloomed rose that has yet to open its petals.  The eternal is representative of that belief in love and its completeness. That when you are in love, even in its beginning, that it will last forever only be stopped by death itself. But Burns took eternal beyond the physical death and to the destruction of the seas themselves. An apocalyptic event that would occur well beyond Burns’ own passing. The themes of new love blossoming into eternal commitment are what makes A Red, Red Rose an eternal piece of its own, but to understand its importance you must look into its bones, which will fade away before the love ever does.

Broken into four stanzas. Burns’ poem can be split into two parts: love in the first two stanzas and eternity in the last two. This break is not only marked by its contents but also the rhyme schemes. Stanzas one and two are A, B, C, B, while three and four are an A,B, A, B pattern. The structure of this poem was in part the result of Burns taking inspiration from traditional Scottish songs, as this poem is often sung rather than recited. The breaks created by the rhyme scheme allow for the longer pauses to seem less broken, creating a song whosethat’s pacing and delivery match the atmosphere created by the lyrics. To understand why this shift occurs and its significance we first must look at the first two stanzas’ meaning and word choice. 

  O my Luve is like a red, red rose (A)
   That’s newly sprung in June; (B)
O my Luve is like the melody (C)
   That’s sweetly played in tune. (B)

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, (D)
   So deep in luve am I; (E)
And I will luve thee still, my dear, (F)
   Till a’ the seas gang dry. (E)

Lines one and three in each stanza (A and C, D and F) are followed by a part of the rhyme pair (B and B, E and E), splitting the stanzas into halves making each pair of lines a separate description of their love. The descriptions in stanza one are similes describing the love they have. Each line leading into its description with each description rhyming with it’s stanza pair. Stanza two is the introduction of who is the focus of this new love and a move into describing the infinity of their love. In stanza two the non rhyming stanzas are both addressing the subject of the love directly  “My bonnie lass… my dear”, followed by the descriptions of love. The descriptions of love being the main focus of these two stanzas show that this is a profession of love more so than a profession of why they love. We never are given a description of who this love is meant for more than the line, “so fair art thou” making the subject almost unimportant compared to the feeling of love itself. Before moving into the final two stanzas the poem creates a 5th internal stanza split between stanza two and three.

And I will luve thee still, my dear,
   Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
   And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;

There is a rhyme scheme carried between the two stanzas with an A, B, A, C pattern. These four lines share the theme of love and apocalyptic imagery and as the only lines where apocalyptic imagery is used these four lines split the poem into three sections; new found love, the depth of the love, and the eternal nature of the love. This is made more apparent as we move into the last two stanzas  “My bonnie lass… my dear”, followed by the descriptions of love which guides us into the final two stanzas.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, (A)
   And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; (B)
I will love thee still, my dear, (A)
   While the sands o’ life shall run. (B)

And fare thee weel, my only luve! (C)
   And fare thee weel awhile! (D)
And I will come again, my luve, (C)
   Though it were ten thousand mile. (D)

We are greeted by a familiar line at the beginning of stanza three, repeating the last line from stanza two adding on “my dear”.  This link between stanza two and three marks the shift between rhyme schemes and themes. We have moved away from describing the feeling of life and into describing the longevity of love. With the bridge between the two halves made the poem takes on a more somber tone. The third stanza speaks of the seas drying and the rocks being swallowed by the sun and even still their love will endure, putting those descriptions in the first two lines. Allowing the last two in the stanza to bring us into the poem’s conclusion in stanza four. This structure is complemented by the rhyme scheme, again breaking the stanza into halves but this time they are linked by both lines within each half. The final stanza follows the same rhyme scheme breaking its parts into halves: the farewell and the promise of return.

As we move into stanza four we are met by those words of parting. Our poet is bidding farewell to their lover. Not exactly what I would expect after three stanzas describing how beautiful and infinite their love is, but that’s why they have described the strength of their love to such extremes. They are leaving their lover for a long time and if the love was weak or only a fleeting moment, then the love will surely dry up like the sea. This is why the last two lines of the poem are the most important. They give a promise of return. They give promise of return no matter the divide, and as their love is eternal then neither time nor distance will stop this love. 

This year has been chaotic. 2020 has felt like the beginning of the end for many–that this marks the start of the final chapter and that soon life as we know it will fade away into the endless flow of time. It’s an understandable belief and one that is hard to convince yourself otherwise if you really look at it. But we are not turning into those dry seas, we are not the rocks being swallowed by the sun. We are that new rose blooming in spring, newly realized life that is only just beginning to show. A Red, Red Rose is a poem of enduring and eternal love of another, and that eternal belief that nothing will remain but our love makes me hopeful. For anyone who is struggling with the loss of a loved one, or the loss of self-love, remember that love is not a physical phenomena but an emotional one. Physical death or the drying of the seas of the melting of the planet can not destroy this freshly sprung rose. Love is always with you, it just may be on its way back upon that ten thousand mile journey.