Lines, Wrote by Burns, While on His Deathbed

Lines, Wrote by Burns, While on His Deathbed - fact Summary

Written on His Deathbed

This very short lyric records a speaker’s abrupt grief at the death of someone who once sang of Ranken. The image of a green grassy hillock covering the dead person’s head contrasts past liveliness with present finality. The closing exclamation emphasizes the speaker’s shock at the “devilish change” from life to burial. A crucial contextual fact: Robert Burns wrote this on his deathbed, which frames the poem as a personal, immediate confrontation with mortality rather than a distant elegy.