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Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 86: OPEN THE DOOR TO ME, OH!
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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.

OPEN THE DOOR TO ME, OH!

‘Oh, open the door, some pity to shew,
Oh, open the door to me, oh!
Tho’ thou hast been false, I’ll ever prove true,
Oh, open the door to me, oh!
‘Cauld is the blast upon my pale cheek,
But caulder thy love for me, oh!
The frost that freezes the life at my heart,
Is nought to my pains frae thee, oh!
‘The wan moon is setting ayont the white wave,
And time is setting with me, oh!
False friends, false love, farewell! for mair
I’ll ne’er trouble them, nor thee, oh!’
She has open’d the door, she has open’d it wide;
She sees his pale corse on the plain, oh!
‘My true love!’ she cried, and sank down by his side,
Never to rise again, oh!