A Red, Red Rose

Burns’s “A Red, Red Rose” consists of 16 lines and is separated into four stanzas (groupings) of four lines each. These groupings of four lines are known as quatrains. The first two quatrains feature a rhyme scheme where the first and third lines do not rhyme, but the second and fourth lines do. For example, in the first two stanzas, “June” (Line 2) rhymes with “tune” (Line 4), and “I” (Line 6) rhymes with “dry” (Line 8). Therefore, the rhyme scheme would be represented as ABCB.

However, this rhyme scheme slightly changes in the last two stanzas. In the final two quatrains, the first and third lines end with the same word, while the second and fourth lines rhyme. For example, in the third stanza, the first and third lines both end with “dead” (Lines 9, 11) while the other two lines rhyme “sun” (Line 10) and “run” (Line 12). In the final, fourth stanza, the first and third lines have “luve” at the end (Lines 13, 15), while the second and fourth lines rhyme “awhile” (Line 14) and “mile” (Line 16). Therefore, the rhyme scheme for these last two stanzas would be represented as ABAB.