[8] stibble, stubble.

[9] card, compass-face.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. Robert Burns (1759-1796) was a Scottish poet, whose home was near Ayr, in Scotland. His life was short and filled with poverty and hardship, but he saw beauty in the common things of life and had a heart full of sympathy. He wrote this poem at a time when he was in great trouble. His farm was turning out badly, the soil was sour and wet, his crops were failures, and he saw nothing but ruin before him. Burns’s tenderness and sympathy are shown in the feeling expressed in this poem at crushing the flower.

Discussion. 1. How does the English daisy, which Burns describes in the first line of the poem, differ from the daisy that you know, the American daisy? 2. Select and give the meaning of words that illustrate Burns’s use of the Scotch dialect. 3. Picture the incident related in the first stanza. 4. What do you know about the lark that helps you to understand why it is called the daisy’s “companion” and “neebor”? 5. What comparison is made between the daisy and the garden flowers? 6. What “share” is mentioned in stanza 5? 7. What characteristic of the flower does Burns seem to like best?

Phrases

SWEET PEAS