Mary Morison

By Robert Burns 1759–1796 Robert Burns

O Mary, at thy window be,

It is the wish'd, the trysted hour!

Those smiles and glances let me see,

That makes the miser's treasure poor:

How blythely wad I bide the stoure,

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 wilt na gie

At least be pity to me shown:

A thought ungentle canna be

The thought o' Mary Morison.

Biography

Born on 25 January 1759 in Alloway, Scotland, to William and Agnes Brown Burnes, Robert Burns followed his father's example by becoming a tenant farmer. Unlike William Burnes, however, Burns was able to escape the vicissitudes and vagaries of the soil in two ways: toward the end of his life he became an excise collector in Dumfries, where he died in 1796; and throughout his life he was a practicing poet. As a poet he recorded . . .

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