Bard of Scotland is a lover’s best friend

O, my love’s like a red, red rose, that’s newly spring in June…

WHAT better for St Valentine’s Day than “a red, red rose”?

The staleness of familiarity should not prevent us from inhaling the rich freshness and transcendence of Robbie Burns’s great love lyric.

Laced with all the lilting cadences of light Scottish dialect it was much frowned upon as a peasant patois after the union of Scotland and England. Burns pre-eminently placed the vernacular at the heart of his literature. This poem echoes down the centuries, its simplicity counterpointed with breathtaking hyperbole which, nevertheless, ranges across things as elemental and eternal as love itself — the seas, the sun, the rocks…. the sands of time… the thousands of miles irrelevant to lovers showing such great disdain for all the limitations of time and space.

“There is really no end to what need not be said about this poem,” remarked American poet Richard Wilbur, urging us to enjoy the poem for its own sake and not to overdo the analysis.

He did note the changes between stanzas two and three, when the poem briefly shifts focus from the beloved to celebrate the poet’s own elevated feelings.

Perhaps it’s here the poem rises to its most heightened and passionate best.

I hope for some “star-crossed lovers”, at least, this lyric may just

For others it may be a reminder of sublime days past. And for others still, the shape of things to come. What’s been said here has been said countless times before and since, but how many times has it ever been said better?

Risteard Pardi

Beechwood Park

Ballinlough

Cork