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Poetry · Poem

Mary Morison

Robert BurnsScottish Romantic eraPoem
SOURCE TEXT · English original
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 stour
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 wiltna gie,
At least be pity to me shown;
A thought ungentle canna be
The thought o’ Mary Morison.
Cultural reading

Reading the poem

The speaker asks Mary to come to her window at the appointed hour, recalls sitting at a lighted dance seeing and hearing nothing because she was not there, and finally asks for her love or at least her pity.

Language notes

Text and edition

The text uses Scots spelling and vocabulary (wad, frae, yestreen, braw, wha, canna) and should be read as dialect rather than error; the supplied stanza division also splits one eight-line stanza into two blocks, the second beginning in capitals.