Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 74: O WERE I ON PARNASSUS HILL

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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 WERE I ON PARNASSUS HILL

O were I on Parnassus hill,

Or had o’ Helicon my fill,

That I might catch poetic skill,

To sing how dear I love thee!

But Nith maun be my Muse’s well,

My Muse maun be thy bonnie sel’,

On Corsincon I’ll glow’r and spell,

And write how dear I love thee.

Then come, sweet Muse, inspire my lay!

For a’ the lee-lang simmer’s day

I couldna sing, I couldna say,

How much, how dear, I love thee.

I see thee dancing o’er the green,

Thy waist sae jimp, thy limbs sae clean,

Thy tempting lips, thy roguish e’en—

By Heaven and Earth I love thee!

By night, by day, a-field, at hame,

The thoughts o’ thee my breast inflame:

And aye I muse and sing thy name—

I only live to love thee.

Tho’ I were doom’d to wander on,

Beyond the sea, beyond the sun,

Till my last weary sand was run,

Till then—and then—I’d love thee!