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Robert Burns: Painted portrait, 1787Painted portrait, 1787Alexander Nasmyth · Public domain

246 collected words

Robert Burns

Life dates: 1759 AD — 1796 AD

Burns brings rural experience, social rank and human vulnerability into poems and songs. Follow his Scots-speaking voices and their circumstances rather than reducing them to slogans.

▷ Play this voiceSearch these words ↗Place in time ↗natureworkfaithlifemindknowledgecharactertruth

Life and writing

The Poetry Foundation gives Burns’s lifetime as 1759–1796 and locates his early life in Alloway, Scotland. Its account connects his writing with farming, local experience, culture and social distinctions, alongside his later excise work. Those facts provide separate life context; they do not establish a proverb’s country of origin or a quotation’s composition date. The related collection includes Allan Cunningham’s life and notices as editorial material, which must remain distinct from Burns’s poems and their speakers.

In To a Mouse, the damaged plans lead into a comparison between the animal’s present and the speaker’s remembered troubles and anticipated fears. The anthology and linked text differ in Scots spelling and wording, including naught/nought. The selected stanza from A Man’s a Man for a’ That opposes social display to personal worth; its counterpart also differs, including hodden/hoddin and silk/silks. Such differences belong to edition comparison. The profile retains the archive’s words and does not silently modernize Scots or assign Cunningham authorship of the verse.

Reading this voice

Read To a Mouse through its final comparison of human memory and fear with the mouse’s present. Then read the social-rank stanza in A Man’s a Man for a’ That with the surrounding argument about character. Both linked English/Scots counterparts differ from the archive. Cunningham’s life and notices are editorial additions to the collection, not Burns’s own verse. Keep the source spellings in view rather than replacing them with a standardized or supposedly original form.

Subjects to explore

experiencekindnesscharacterjustice

Words to begin with

Profile sources and editorial notes

Agent-assisted editorial profile, updated 2026-10-05. A human reviewer is not recorded. Biographical context does not independently authenticate every quotation attributed to this person.

Quotations and sayings

03c. 1777 AD
My love is like a red, red rose That's newly sprung in June: My love is like the melody That's sweetly played in tune. How fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in love am I; And I will love thee still, my dear, Till all the seas gang dry. Till all the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt with the sun;I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands of life shall run. And fare thee weel, my only love. And fare thee weel awhile! And I will come again, my love, Though it were ten thousand mile.
Robert Burns / quote
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06c. 1777 AD
Flow gently, sweet Afton,amang thy green braes,Flow gently, I'll sing theea song in thy praise;My Mary's asleepby thy murmuring stream,Flow gently, sweet Afton,disturb not her dream.Thou stock dove whose echoresounds thro' the glen,Ye wild whistly blackbirdsin yon thorny den,Thou green crested lapwingthy screaming forbear,I charge you, disturb notmy slumbering fair.How lofty, sweet Afton,thy neighboring hills,Far mark'd with the coursesof clear winding rills;There daily I wanderas noon rises high,My flocks and my Mary'ssweet cot in my eye.How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below, Where, wild in the woodlands,the primroses blow;There oft, as mild eveningweeps over the lea,The sweet-scented birk shadesmy Mary and me.Thy crystal stream, Afton,how lovely it glides,And winds by the cot wheremy Mary resides;How wanton thy watersher snowy feet lave,As, gathering sweet flowerets,she stems thy clear wave.Flow gently, sweet Afton,amang thy green braes,Flow gently, sweet river,the theme of my lays; My Mary's asleepby thy murmuring stream,Flow gently, sweet Afton,disturb not her dreams.
Robert Burns / quote
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10c. 1777 AD
Is there for honest Poverty That hings his head, an' a' that; The coward slave-we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, an' a' that. Our toils obscure an' a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The Man's the gowd for a' that. What though on hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin grey, an' a that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine; A Man's a Man for a' that: For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, an' a' that; The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, Is king o' men for a' that. Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that: For a' that, an' a' that, His ribband, star, an' a' that: The man o' independent mind He looks an' laughs at a' that. A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, an' a' that; But an honest man's abon his might, Gude faith, he maunna fa' that! For a' that, an' a' that, Their dignities an' a' that; The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth, Are higher rank than a' that. Then let us pray that come it may, (As come it will for a' that,) That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth, Shall bear the gree, an' a' that. For a' that, an' a' that, It's coming yet for a' that, That Man to Man, the world o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that.
Robert Burns / quote
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