Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 33: O THIS IS NO MY AIN LASSIE

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About This Book

A collected selection of the poet's songs and shorter lyrics presents his explorations of love, nature, rural Scottish life, patriotism, and social observation, often rendered in Scots dialect and intended for musical performance. The volume groups brief pieces alongside several longer poems, supplies a glossary of dialect terms and an index of first lines, and includes illustrative plates. Many lyrics evoke landscapes, domestic scenes, and communal gatherings, balancing tenderness and satire while varying tone from celebratory to elegiac. The arrangement favors lyrical vitality rather than strict chronology, offering readers both popular airs and more extended narrative poems within a single accessible anthology.

O THIS IS NO MY AIN LASSIE

I see a form, I see a face,

Ye weel may wi’ the fairest place:

It wants, to me, the witching grace,

The kind love that’s in her e’e.

O this is no my ain lassie,

Fair tho’ the lassie be;

O weel ken I my ain lassie,

Kind love is in her e’e.

She’s bonnie, blooming, straight, and tall,

And lang has had my heart in thrall;

And aye it charms my very saul,

The kind love that’s in her e’e.

A thief sae pawkie is my Jean,

To steal a blink, by a’ unseen;

But gleg as light are lovers’ e’en,

When kind love is in the e’e.

It may escape the courtly sparks,

It may escape the learnèd clerks;

But weel the watching lover marks

The kind love that’s in her e’e.