Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 71: IT IS NA, JEAN, THY BONNIE FACE

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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.

IT IS NA, JEAN, THY BONNIE FACE

It is na, Jean, thy bonnie face,

Nor shape that I admire,

Although thy beauty and thy grace

Might weel awake desire.

Something, in ilka part o’ thee,

To praise, to love, I find;

But dear as is thy form to me,

Still dearer is thy mind.

Nae mair ungenerous wish I hae,

Nor stronger in my breast,

Than if I canna mak thee sae,

At least to see thee blest.

Content am I, if Heaven shall give

But happiness to thee:

And as wi’ thee I’d wish to live,

For thee I’d bear to die.