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Poems and Songs of Robert Burns

Chapter 40: Song—Green Grow The Rashes
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About This Book

The collection assembles lyrical songs, narrative poems, satirical pieces, epistles, epitaphs, and fragments that shift between convivial drinking verses, tender laments, and comic storytelling. Many lyrics were shaped to traditional airs and preserve vernacular speech, while longer works portray rural labor, domestic scenes, and compassionate encounters with animals. Satire targets religious hypocrisy and social pretension, and several poems take a direct, personal tone of moral reflection or affectionate address. The selections alternate moods and forms, emphasizing melodic phrasing and a versatile technical range.

Song—Green Grow The Rashes

A Fragment Chor.—Green grow the rashes, O; Green grow the rashes, O; The sweetest hours that e’er I spend, Are spent amang the lasses, O. There’s nought but care on ev’ry han’, In ev’ry hour that passes, O: What signifies the life o’ man, An’ ’twere na for the lasses, O. Green grow, &c. The war’ly race may riches chase, An’ riches still may fly them, O; An’ tho’ at last they catch them fast, Their hearts can ne’er enjoy them, O. Green grow, &c. But gie me a cannie hour at e’en, My arms about my dearie, O; An’ war’ly cares, an’ war’ly men, May a’ gae tapsalteerie, O! Green grow, &c. For you sae douce, ye sneer at this; Ye’re nought but senseless asses, O: The wisest man the warl’ e’er saw, He dearly lov’d the lasses, O. Green grow, &c. Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears Her noblest work she classes, O: Her prentice han’ she try’d on man, An’ then she made the lasses, O. Green grow, &c.