The opening line really resonated with me, “Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r” (li. 1) describes
how feeble and delicate the daisy is while portraying its innocence and
purity; and yet incorporating the crimson that outlined the circumference of
the white of a daisy gave the poem a foreshadowing effect of an inescapable impurity.
Then, of course the following few lines explain that the personified flower will be crushed into the very dust that it was birthed from. This is, I believe
to be a parallel of the circle of life and also gives a sense of helplessness that a human child is
born with. The crimson that grows or seeps in from the outside (or the parameter
of the petals) resembles the corruption of world and how it taints the pure
that is brought into it.
The beautiful depiction of nature and the world surrounding
the daisy in this poem is breathtaking to me and at the same time gives me an
underlying sense of melancholy. You can really see the flower blooming with
such a romantically painted sky, “when
upward-springing, blythe, to greet the purpling east.” (li. 11-12). But
then you become weighed down by the heaviness of the disappointment and gloom that
follows in the subsequent stanzas.
The third stanza talks about the daisy as if it has the
purity, and ignorance of a child being birthed into a cold world of storms
and chaos,
“Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm,
Scarce rear'd above the parent-earth
Thy tender form.” (li. 13-18)
Then it goes into what I perceive to be a ranking or hierarchy
of class when transitioning into the fourth stanza and speaking of “the flaunting
flow'rs our gardens yield, high shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield;” (li.
19-20) Then elaborating on the differences of the luxurious gardens and random shelters
to which other flowers are privileged to reside within and yet the daisy is
left alone in the stubble of a field which is associated with poverty. This makes me feel like there is more that what initially meets the eye when reading this poem, and goes into lower, middle and upper classifications of people and the unfairness or sheer luck within that hiatus.
Going forward into the next stanza you get to feel the full
effect of the tragic ploughing or destruction of the beauty and innocence of
where the daisy once lived in ignorant bliss. This is explored more in the
sixth stanza when compared to the “artless maid” (li. 31) being betrayed after she is soiled and laid, or in other words tricked into giving away her virtue. More unfair, suffering
fate is distributed into the life of the simple bard and essentially all of
mankind “who long with wants and woes has striv'n, by human pride or cunning
driv'n to mis'rys brink;” (li. 44-46) The end of the poem transforms the simple mountain daisy into
a symbol of all of humanity, which apparently will experience an impending doom that we can not escape.
Questions:
1. Did anyone else have a different interpretation of this poem?
2. I also want to know why Burns is so pessimistic and yet romantic?
3. Is "Stern Ruin's" (li. 51) a person or is this just a really dumb question?? lol
Nice reading of the opening line—the flower is figured first as a female child throughout the opening stanzas poem, and this line begins the personification continued by bonie, neighbor, cheerfully, tender form, and The descriptions of the daisy’s “humble birth,” “scanty mantle,” and “unassuming head” suggest the allegory between the daisy and the artless maid, simple bard, and suffering worth that is spelled out in the succeeding stanzas. “Stern Ruin” is, however, a different kind of personification, one more prevalent in the early eighteenth century, that personifies and gives agency to an abstract concept. The personified daisy and her human counterparts are downtrodden by “Stern Ruin,” a condition that raises the question of power and agency in the poem: are the maid, bard and daisy all fated to fall (or already exist in a fallen state, the daisy from growing on the mountainside, and the maid by being artless), or can they escape from ruin? Burns’ adjectives indicate the importance of this problem in the poem: by being called a “mountain” daisy or an “artless” maid or a “simple” bard or “suffering” worth, Burns has defined the powerlessness of these types through the adjectives he uses to describe them. We might understand this rhetorical technique as either equating social standing with life outcome, or as drawing attention to the way descriptions (or social categories) objectify people and things, scripting particular outcomes for them. Either way, the two forms of personification in the poem draw out attention to this problem.
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