Ye Flowery Banks (Bonie Doon)

By Robert Burns 1759–1796 Robert Burns

Ye flowery banks o' bonie Doon,

How can ye blume sae fair?

How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I sae fu' o' care?

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonie bird,

That sings upon the bough;

Thou minds me o' the happy days,

When my fause love was true.

Thou'll break my heart, thou bonie bird,

That sings beside thy mate;

For sae I sat, and sae I sang,

And wist na o' my fate.

Aft hae I rov'd by bonie Doon

To see the wood-bine twine,

And ilka bird sang o' its luve,

And sae did I o' mine.

Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose

Frae aff its thorny tree;

And my fause luver staw my rose

But left the thorn wi' me.

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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