Song (Ae fons kiss) - Robert Burns

Song (Ae fons kiss) - Robert Burns

1. Form and structure

   • Uses Rhyming couplets throughout the poem
   • Poem goes full circel
     • Starts of grieving and ends up grieving
   • Lyric poem
   • follows a trochaic tetrameter
   • Assonance throughout the poem

2. Language Analysis, Techniques and Imagery

   • ' Ae fond kiss, and then we sever/Ae farewell, and then,forever!
     • forever shows the finality of the situation and the exclamation mark emphasises it
   • Warring sighs and groans i'll wage thee
     • onomatapoeia signify an inner battle
     • Sighs and groans are the price he has to pay for their parting
   • 'The star of hope she leaves him'
     • Love is shown as a guiding light- this is also a refernce to Sonnet 116 because love is shown in a similar way
   • 'Dark Depsair around benights me'
     • Alliteration brings to attention the pitiable state that the speaker is in after the depature of his beloved
   • Ironic he calls her 'My' because she was never his
   • No sense of lust it is admiration

3. Types of love

   • Abandoned love
   • unrequited love
   • Loss of love

4. Typicality of love poems

   • Love was shown has a hopeful and powerful force in a lot of poems at the time
   • typical features of a romantic poem

5. reference

   • Sonnet 116 - Both show love as a guiding light