Analysis of the poem by Burn A Red, Red Rose'A Red, Red Rose', was first published in 1794 in A Selection of Scots Songs, edited by Peter Urbani. Written in ballad stanzas, the verse - read today as a poem - brings together conventional 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 to a rose blooming in spring and then to a melody "played sweetly in tune." If these similes seem like typical fodder for love song lyricists, the second and third verses introduce the more subtle and complex implications of time. In attempting 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 love's greatest limitation, “the sands of life.” This hourglass image forces the reader to reevaluate the poem's first and most beautiful image: a "red, red rose" is itself the subject of an hour, "newly budded" only "in June" and subsequently subject to decay. of time. This treatment of time and beauty predicts the work of later Romantic poets, who took Burns's work as an important influence. "A Red, Red Rose" is written in four four-line stanzas, or quatrains, consisting of alternating lines of tetrameter and trimeter. . This means that the first and third lines of each stanza have four stressed syllables, or beats, while the second and fourth lines have three stressed syllables. Quatrains written this way are called ballad stanzas. The ballad is an ancient verse form adapted for singing or recitation, originating in the days when most poetry existed in spoken rather than written form. The typical subject matter of most ballads reflects popular themes important to ordinary people: love, courage, the mysterious, and the supernatural. Although the ballad is generally rich in musical qualities such as rhythm and repetition, it often portrays both ideas and feelings in exaggerated but simplistic terms. The dominant meter of the ballad's stanza is iambic, meaning that the poem's 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 indicated accents: It is sweet / sweetly played / in tune.