Themes

The main themes of the poem “A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns are love and the passage of time. A subsequent theme is that of nature and the symbolical elements it contains.

Love

The poem “A Red, Red Rose” is a poem about love. The poet did not depict just any romantic encounter or an exaltation of someone watching a beautiful woman. On the contrary, the poem depicts the ideal love, one which could transcend life and death.

As you have seen, the speaker talks about his love for the unnamed woman in each stanza. One line at a time, the intensity of his love grows, becoming so great that the speaker feels like it could even surpass death or keep on existing even after the end of the world. There are many other poems which deal with the theme of love, but few are as beautiful and as intense as “A Red, Red Rose”.

Try to imagine living in a world without love. It is imp...