05第18讲Red_Red_Rose.ppt

Selected Readingsin British Literature Unit 6 Robert Burns (1759 -1796) A Red, Red Rose Context 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 - pieces 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 with a blooming rose in spring and then with a melody sweetly playd in tune. If these similes seem the typical fodder for love-song lyricists, the second and third stanzas introduce the subtler and more complex implications of time. In trying 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 loves greatest limitation, the sands o life. This image of the hour - glass forces the reader to reassess of the poems first and loveliest image: A red, red rose is itself an object of an hour, newly sprung only in June and afterward subject to the decay of time. This treatment of time and beauty predicts the work of the later Romantic poets, who took Burnss work as an important influence. A Red, Red Rose O my luves like a red, red rose Thats newly sprung in June; O mu luves like the melodie Thats sweetly playd in tune. As fair art thou, my bonie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a the seas gang dry. Till a the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi the sun; O I will luve thee still, my dear While the sands o life shall run. And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve! And fare-thee-weel awhile! And I will come again, my luve, Tho twere ten thousand miles. Form A Red, Red Rose is written in four four-line stanzas, or quatrains, consisting of alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines. This means that the first and third lines of each stanza have four stressed syllables, or beats, while the second