O my Luve is like a red, red rose That\'s newly sprung in June; O my Luve is like the melodie That\'s sweetly play\'d 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 luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o\' life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only Luve, And fare thee weel a while! And I will come again, my Luve, Tho\' it were ten thousand mile.
In these lines, Robert Burns weaves love into the fabric of nature and time, grounding emotion in the tangible yet transcendent. The red rose, \"newly sprung in June,\" is no mere decoration—it is love made visible: vibrant, delicate, and brimming with life. June, a month of warmth and bloom, mirrors the freshness of affection; the rose, with its rich hue, becomes a symbol not just of beauty, but of ardor—unapologetic, vivid, and immediate.
Yet love here is not static. It evolves into melody, \"sweetly play\'d in tune\"—a harmony that lingers in the air, as intangible as emotion itself but felt deeply. The shift from sight to sound expands the love’s reach: it is both seen and heard, a sensory symphony that defies simple definition.
The poem moves then to grand promises, where time bends to devotion. \"Till a\' the seas gang dry\"—an impossible event, yet spoken with quiet certainty. Burns does not shy from hyperbole, for love, in its fullness, demands magnitude. The rocks melting with the sun, the sands of life running out—these are not threats to love, but benchmarks for it. They frame affection as something that outlasts even the elements, persisting when worlds end.
There is tenderness too, in the final stanza. \"Fare thee weel a while\" softens the grandeur, adding the ache of separation. Yet even distance—\"ten thousand mile\"—cannot diminish the vow: \"I will come again, my Luve.\" Love here is both bold and gentle, a force that endures through absence, rooted in the same certainty as the rose in June or the melody in tune.
Burns writes not of fleeting passion but of a love that embeds itself in the very order of things: nature’s cycles, the passage of time, the quiet resolve to return. It is love as both a moment—\"newly sprung\"—and an eternity—\"while the sands o\' life shall run.\" In these verses, love is not explained; it is *shown*: through petals, music, seas, and stars, until it becomes as inevitable as the rising sun.