The theme of love and permanence in the poem “A Red, Red Rose. (Answers in 200 words)
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“A Red, Red Rose” is a poem composed by Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns. It was first published in 1794 in a collection of traditional Scottish songs set to music. Burns’s poem was inspired both by a simple Scots song he had heard in the country and by published ballads from the period. The poem has the form of a ballad and is meant to be sung aloud. It describes the speaker’s deep love for his or her beloved and promises that this love will last longer than human life and even the planet itself, remaining fresh and constant forever.
Read the full text of “A Red, Red Rose”
“A Red, Red Rose” Summary
The speaker describes his or her love—meaning either the person the speaker loves or the speaker's feelings of love for that person—as being as beautiful, vivid, and fresh as a flower that has just recently bloomed. This love is as sweet as a beautiful song played by a skilled musician.
The beloved is so beautiful that the speaker loves her with a deep and strong passion—so strong, in fact, that the speaker's love will last until the oceans have become dry.
Even after the seas have evaporated and the earth has decayed, the speaker will still love the beloved. This love will endure until their own lives have ended and even until all human life has ended.
The speaker concludes by saying goodbye to the beloved—who is, the speaker reminds her, the only person the speaker loves. The speaker wishes her well during their temporary separation. The speaker reaffirms his or her faithful love by promising to return even if the journey covers a very long distance and takes a very long time.
“A Red, Red Rose” Themes

Love and Change
“A Red, Red Rose” begins by describing the speaker’s love for a beloved with images that are beautiful but not necessarily long-lasting. The speaker then affirms, however, that his or her love will outlast human life itself. Through the speaker’s paradoxical (but passionate) claims, the poem argues that true love is both constantly renewing and completely unchangeable.
The speaker begins by describing love in terms that are beautiful but that don’t immediately suggest permanence. The first lines compare the speaker’s love to “a red, red rose.” “Luve” could refer to the beloved, the person the speaker loves. It could also refer to the speaker’s feelings for this person. Saying the beloved is like a rose “newly sprung in June” emphasizes her beauty and youth. Meanwhile, saying that the speaker’s love for her is like a new rose implies that this is a new relationship, with all the freshness and excitement of a developing romance. Of course, a rose can only be “newly sprung” for a short time; June ends after thirty days, and flowers fade quickly. If the speaker’s love is just like a new rose, maybe it won’t last very long.
The speaker then says this love is like “a melody / That’s sweetly played in tune.” But again, instruments can go out of tune, just as flowers can fade. The newness and excitement of the speaker’s love initially make it seem somewhat unstable.
Then, however, the speaker goes on to emphasize how long this love will last. The speaker uses three images to measure how long these feelings of love will last: the seas going dry, the rocks melting, and the sands of life running out. These events could only occur after eons of time, if ever. It seems now that the speaker’s love, far from lasting only as long as a flower, will actually endure longer than human life. Although these conflicting descriptions of the speaker’s love sound like a paradox, the speaker continues to insist that true love really can embody these seemingly opposite qualities of newness and permanence.
In the final stanza, the speaker bids farewell to the beloved, as if the speaker is planning to leave on a journey. The beloved doesn’t need to worry, though, because the speaker promises to return, even if the journey is “ten thousand mile[s]” long. This promise implies that, just as long stretches of time could not exhaust the speaker’s love for the beloved, a long stretch of distance cannot keep the speaker from her. And the length of this journey now seems short—just “awhile”—compared to the near-infinite time the speaker’s love will last. It seems, then, that love like the speaker’s is powerful enough to make earthly obstacles (like physical distance) feel insignificant. That is, this love is reliable and constant, but it also feels fresh and exciting enough to adapt to changed circumstances. The moment of farewell in the final stanza highlights the speaker’s core argument: love that lasts forever is also love that allows for change over time.
“A Red, Red Rose” is a poem composed by Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns. It was first published in 1794 in a collection of traditional Scottish songs set to music. Burns’s poem was inspired both by a simple Scots song he had heard in the country and by published ballads from the period. The poem has the form of a ballad and is meant to be sung aloud. It describes the speaker’s deep love for his or her beloved and promises that this love will last longer than human life and even the planet itself, remaining fresh and constant forever.
The speaker describes his or her love—meaning either the person the speaker loves or the speaker's feelings of love for that person—as being as beautiful, vivid, and fresh as a flower that has just recently bloomed. This love is as sweet as a beautiful song played by a skilled musician.
The beloved is so beautiful that the speaker loves her with a deep and strong passion—so strong, in fact, that the speaker's love will last until the oceans have become dry.
Even after the seas have evaporated and the earth has decayed, the speaker will still love the beloved. This love will endure until their own lives have ended and even until all human life has ended.
The speaker concludes by saying goodbye to the beloved—who is, the speaker reminds her, the only person the speaker loves. The speaker wishes her well during their temporary separation. The speaker reaffirms his or her faithful love by promising to return even if the journey covers a very long distance and takes a very long time.