As a person and as a poet, R. Burns was influenced by two national cultures, Scottish and English. The lyrics of R. Burns were close to folk not only in sound, but in content. He was imbued with a mood of sincere sympathy for working people and mocking contempt for the arrogant rich. His poetry reflected peasant life in all its diversity: exhausting work in the field and cheerful feasts, ancient customs and everyday life, love dates and bitter partings. Most importantly, Burns’s poems were imbued with the people’s worldview and they also imprinted faith in the moral strength of the people.
The poem “A Red, Red Rose” is considered one of the masterpieces of R. Burns. However, it was once a song and was sung in rural Scotland in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the phrases and ideas from this poem can be found in any other song popular in those parts at that time. R. Burns recorded and reworked this song, which became his author’s work about love. The eternal theme of the poem – unfading love – is vividly and freshly embodied by the poet. The author uses comparisons, hyperbole, metaphor and anaphora to convey the all-encompassing love of the lyrical hero.
The poem begins with one of the world’s most famous metaphorical similes. The hero of R. Burns says that his love is like a red rose, which “newly sprung in June” (Burns, line 2). In other words, the love of a lyrical hero is like a flower that has just been born. This means that his love is not just beautiful, it is new, fresh, and young. Burns’ character compares love to “melodie” (an old spelling of the word “melody”), which “sweetly played in tune”(4). This melody sounds sweet and pure, because this is the first, pure love of the lyrical hero, to which he treats reverently and tenderly, with reverence. The word “in tune” by Burns characterizes the first love and is an epithet – a figurative artistic definition.
The anaphora “O my Luve’” not only expresses the admiration of the lyrical hero for his beloved, but also gives the poetic text song intonations, makes it melodic. The melody of speech is also enhanced by the lexical repetition “O my Luve is like a red, red rose // O my Luve is like the melody “(2-4). This is a stylistic figure, which consists in the intentional repetition of the same word or speech construction in a visible section of the text. Burns deliberately uses these means of language to give expressiveness to his poem.
Burns’ character says he will love his girlfriend as long as “the he sands o’ life shall run”, which means “as long as I am alive” (12). The time of a person’s life on earth is compared to an hourglass. A metaphor is used here that denotes the eternal, endless life of nature and the fleeting life of man. The hero breaks up with his beloved and hopes to meet soon. However, the words that indicate this – “sands o’ life” – have connotations. The hero must hurry, because time does not wait and he may not be in time.
Hyperbole helps Burns to show the immensity, the boundlessness of love: the hero is ready to go “ten thousand mile” in the name of his love. Hyperbole is used together with other means of the language: it is superimposed on the same syntactic constructions – syntactic parallelism. The lyrical hero will love his girlfriend “until all the seas gang dry” “and the rocks melt wi’ the sun” (10). This technique enhances the expressiveness of speech, emphasizes the main idea of the author. In addition, the same syntactic and lexical constructions make Burns’ speech close to a folk song, a folklore basis, because parallelism and lexical repetition are widespread in folklore.
Robert Burns wrote his poetry mainly in Scottish English, popularizing the language of his homeland. Words such as “bonnie” and “lass,” “gang” and “weel,” are hallmarks of Burns’ poetry. They give his poems a unique flavor. In the very language of Burns’ poems there is nothing artificial, mannered. This is the living colloquial speech of the Scottish peasants of his time. The naturalness of the language is combined in Burns with melodious melody or clear combat rhythms.
Burns uses natural symbolism to describe the depth and power of the lyrical hero’s love. It seems that he cannot describe his feelings without mentioning some object of nature. This suggests that people’s emotions are natural, they are as organic as rocks or flowers, and therefore they are eternal. Scotland is a country of lakes, mountain valleys, moorlands. And of course, there is nothing surprising that R. Burns turns to nature to tell about his love. The pictures of nature are so vivid that one can imagine ourselves traveling through these lakes, moss swamps, valleys where sheep graze and where lovers sing songs of love.
Thus, to convey the feelings that the lyrical hero has for his girlfriend, Burns uses different stylistic devices, such as hyperbole, comparison, metaphor and anaphora. Freedom in the work of R. Burns is achieved at the cost of great labor; every word, every phrase of his is weighed and carefully thought out. The constant work of R. Burns on folklore to a large extent determined the nature of the poet’s original work. Being an outstanding lyricist of the late Enlightenment, Burns tries to achieve maximum simplicity and concreteness in his love poems.
Work Cited
Burns, Robert. “A Red, Red Rose”. 1794. Poetry Foundation. Web.