Green Grow the Rashes
written in 1783
Green Grow the Rashes - meaning Summary
Pleasure Over Wealth and Care
Burns' lyric celebrates simple, human pleasures—companionship, love, and leisure—over material ambition and worldly anxieties. The speaker insists that life’s sweetest hours are spent among women, mocking those who chase wealth or scorn affection as foolish. Nature is invoked to cast women as a deliberate and superior part of creation, while the speaker values an evening spent with his beloved above social status or riches. The poem blends genial humor and plainspoken argument to defend ordinary, sensual joy as the true worth of life.
Read Complete AnalysesGreen grow the rashes , O; Green grow the rashes , O; The sweetest hours that e'er I spend, Are spent amang the lasses, O. There's nought but care on ev'ry han' , In ev'ry hour that passes, O: What signifies the life o' man, An' 'twere na for the lasses, O. The war'ly race may riches chase, - An' riches still may fly them, O; An' tho' at last they catch them fast, Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O. But gie me a cannie hour at e'en , My arms about my dearie, O; An' war'ly cares, an' war'ly men, May a' gae tapsalteerie , O! For you sae douce , ye sneer at this; Ye're nought but senseless asses, O: The wisest man the warl' e'er saw , He dearly lov'd the lasses, O. Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears Her noblest work she classes, O: Her prentice han' she try'd on man, An' then she made the lasses, O. Green grow the rashes , O; Green grow the rashes , O; The sweetest hours that e'er I spend, Are spent amang the lasses, O.
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