Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 6: MARY MORISON

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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.

MARY MORISON

O Mary, at thy window be,

It is the wish’d, the trysted hour!

Those smiles and glances let me see,

That make the miser’s treasure poor:

How blythely wad I bide the stoure,

A weary slave frae sun to sun,

Could I the rich reward secure,

The lovely Mary Morison.

Yestreen, when to the trembling string

The dance gaed thro’ the lighted ha’,

To thee my fancy took its wing,

I sat, but neither heard nor saw:

Tho’ this was fair, and that was braw,

And yon the toast of a’ the town,

I sigh’d, and said amang them a’,

‘Ye are na Mary Morison.’

O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace,

Wha for thy sake wad gladly die?

Or canst thou break that heart of his,

Whase only faut is loving thee?

If love for love thou wilt na gie,

At least be pity to me shown!

A thought ungentle canna be

The thought o’ Mary Morison.