Analysis of Burns Poem A Red, Red Rose :: Burn Red Red Rose Essays

Analysis of Burns Poem A Red, Red Rose   A Red, Red Rose, was first published in 1794 in A infusion of Scots Songs, edited by Peter Urbani. Written in ballad stanzas, the verse - read today as a poem pieces together schematic ideas and images of love in a way that transcends the low or non-literary sources from which the poem is drawn. In it, the speaker compares his love first with a blooming rose in spring and then with a melody sweetly playd in tune. If these similes seem the typical fodder for love-song lyricists, the second and third stanzas introduce the subtler and more intricate implications of time. In trying to quantify his feelings - and in searching for the perfect metaphor to describe the eternal nature of his love - the speaker inevitably comes up against loves greatest limitation, the sands o life. This image of the hour-glass forces the reader to reassess of the poems first and loveliest image A red, red rose is itself an object of an hour, newly sprung only in June and afterward undetermined to the decay of time. This treatment of time and beauty predicts the work of the later Romantic poets, who took Burnss work as an important influence.   A Red, Red Rose is written in four four- statement stanzas, or quatrains, consisting of alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines. This means that the first and third lines of each stanza have four express syllables, or beats, while the second and fourth lines have three stressed syllables. Quatrains written in this manner are called ballad stanzas.   The ballad is a old form of verse adapted for singing or recitation, originating in the years when most poetry existed in spoken rather than written form. The typical subject matter of most ballads reflects folk themes important to common people love, courage, the mysterious, and the supernatural. though the ballad is generally rich in musical qualities such as rhythm and repetition, it often portrays both ideas and feelings in overwrought but simplistic terms. The governing meter of the ballad stanza is iambic, which means the poems lines are constructed in two-syllable segments, called iambs, in which the first syllable is unstressed and the second is stressed. As an example of iambic meter, consider the following line from the poem with the stresses indicated      Thats sweet / ly playd / in tune.