O, my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.Robert Burns (1759-1796) Scottish national poet
“A Red Red Rose” (1796)Burns derived the text from various folk songs.
Quotations by:
Burns, Robert
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.Robert Burns (1759-1796) Scottish national poet
“Epitaph on My Own Friend and My Father’s Friend, William Muir in Tarbolton,” ll. 7-8 (1784-04), First Commonplace Book (1785).
(Source)
A mock epitaph for William Muir (1745-1793), a miller in Tarbolton and good friend to Burns' family.
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion ….Robert Burns (1759-1796) Scottish national poet
“To a Louse,” l.43-46 (1786)
The poem is reprinted in various forms and anglicizations of Burns' Scottish, e.g.,O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An foolish notionO would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
Beauty’s of a fading nature,
Has a season and is gone!
The worst of it is, by the time one has finished a piece, it has been so often viewed and reviewed before the mental eye, that one loses in a good measure the powers of critical discrimination. Here the best criterion I know is a friend –n ot only of abilities to judge, but with good-nature enough, like a prudent teacher with a young learner, to praise perhaps a little more than is exactly just, lest the thin-skinned animal fall into that most deplorable of all poetic diseases — heart-breaking despondency of himself.