Featured Poem: My love is like a red, red rose by Robert Burns

As Burns Night approaches we thought no better time to start celebrating than with our weekly Featured Poem, My love is like a red, red rose by Robert Burns.

Born in 1759, Robert "Rabby" Burns is perhaps Scotland's most famous poet and lyricist. Celebrating the Scots dialect in his writing, Burns was celebrated as a pioneer of the Romantic movement and became renowned for collecting and adapting traditional Scottish folk songs.

Hi poetic style is marked by spontaneity, directness and sincerity with injections of humour and tender intensity which had a great influence on Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Robert Burns' birthday, January 25, is traditionally celebrated across the world with Burns Suppers. So before we set about preparing the haggis or opening a bottle of Scotch, we thought we would begin the week with one of his more romantic verses:

My love is like a red, red rose

My love is like a red, red rose
MY love is like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June:
My love is like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I:
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till all the seas gang dry.
Till all the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt with the sun:
And I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands of life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only love.
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my love,
Though it were ten thousand mile.
Robert Burns