Robert Burns Research Paper

Morgan Krueger
Honors Intro to Lit. 4
Mrs. Gahre
February 4, 2016

Robert Burns, Poet Robert Burns is a very esteemed Scottish poet and displays his thoughts and feelings on paper through poetry, song writing, and other literary writings. Burns was born on January 25, 1759 and passed away on July 21, 1796 at only 37 years old. However his poetry with themes about love, nature, and life outlived his short life. Burns relates his poetry to his own life, talking in first person, and is often speaking to the reader, or another person. Burns consistently used poetic devices such as rhyme, refrain, and lyric poetry elements in his poetry.
Burns’ poetry is given character through the specific poetic devices he uses in his literary works and writings. …show more content…
In “A Sonnet upon Sonnets” there is a constant rhyme that follows each line. The rhyme scheme is not perfect owing to the fact that the rhyme follows every other line, however in a few instances the rhyme happens in couplets. Burns’ poem “A Sonnet upon Sonnets” displays the common rhyme scheme: “Fourteen, a sonneteer thy praises sings; What magic myst’ries in that number lie! Your hen hath fourteen eggs between her wings”(Burns lines 1-3). Burns’ poetry contains at least some type of rhyme scheme or near rhyme throughout his poetic works. Another poetic device Burns used is refrain. The refrain happens in each stanza of the poem in the fourth line of Burns’ poem “Up in the Morning Early”. At the end of each of the four stanzas the line “I’m sure it’s winter fairly.”(Burns lines 4,8,12,16) repeats. In Burns’ other poems he repeats the same idea, word, or …show more content…
The mood in the poetry depends on Burns’ specific theme used in the poem. The themes of the poems revolve primarily around Burns’ experiences in his time. In Burns’ “A Red, Red Rose” he speaks about his undying love for a woman and compares the love to “...a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June;”(Burns Lines 1-2). The metaphor Burns uses implies that his love is fresh and strong. The poem has a romantic mood and sweet intentions to the unknown woman he is speaking to or about. In the late 1700s women were not valued as beings who had much more than the ability to carry children. Burns himself had many romantic partnerships; he even had an affair with a married woman meaning this poem is tied to Burns’ many relationships. However the poem is a work about love that is ideal for explaining true love and can be used for lovers struggling to explain their love. Burns relates poetry to life in his poem “A Sonnet upon Sonnets”. A sonnet has fourteen lines and the poem displays the similarities the number of lines in a sonnet has to ordinary things in life. Burns states “What magic myst’ries in that number lie!” (Burns Line 2) and presents a number of items in life containing the number fourteen ending the sonnet with “Fourteen good measur’d verses make a sonnet.” The mood shared by “A Sonnet upon Sonnets” is joyful; the mood is explained by the fact that simple things in the 1700s made people happy. In the 1700s,

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