Red, Red Rose: Poem Analysis

“A Red, Red Rose”, written by Robert Burns, is a romantic lyric poem that describes the affection that the narrator has for his love. In the poem, similes pertaining to his love are used to convey how deeply he feels about it, and to show that he is being sincere in his words. In the last two stanzas, the narrator states that his love will prevail until the end of time, or for as long as he lives. He also states that he’d still return to his love, even if he had to walk ten thousand miles, meaning that he would do anything or go anywhere for her.

The poem possesses an air of romance, which is shown throughout the poem by the constant use of repetition and metaphors. While it is odd that the narrator speaks mainly of his love for the girl and not of the girl herself, it continues to conform to expectation due to the tone and
It is written in quatrains, with an ABCB rhyme scheme. It is a rather short poem, containing only sixteen lines. In the first stanza, attention is brought to the narrator’s intensity of his love by the alliteration and repetition of “red” in “O my love is like a red, red rose”. Red roses are often considered to be a symbol of love and romance, and by showing what a deep and saturated color red the rose might be, the narrator is also expressing how romantic he feels his love is. This is also made more noticeable by the second use of repetition in the second and third stanzas. He states that “[he] will luve thee still, my dear, / Till a’ the seas gang dry.” at the end of the second stanza and at the beginning of the third, as if reminding the reader or the girl to whom this poem was directed towards that his love will last a very long time, or virtually forever. When the narrator says “I will come again, my luve, / though it were ten thousand mile.”, he uses a hyperbole to show that he will return to his love, even if she is on the other side of the