Love and Passion

Because modern readers are well familiar with the poetic imagery that Burns uses in this poem, and also because "A Red, Red Rose" was originally written to be sung as popular music, some of the poem's impact may be lost to the contemporary audience. The poem expresses love, but it does not try to stir up deep feelings of passion—instead, it reminds readers of love, making the speaker's feelings sound more theoretical than real. In the first stanza, the word "Luve" is used twice as a pronoun, describing a particular person that the speaker has in mind. By talking about this person, the poet draws attention to the other person and to how he relates to that person, rather than examining his own emotions. This raises the impression that the love affair might be more for show, for the approval of other people, than for...