My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose

The title of today's post is from a very famous poem by the Bard of Scotland, Robert Burns. I'm thinking of him because the 252nd anniversary of his birth this past Tuesday. I'm thinking of him also because tonight at Creative Writing, we talked about similes and metaphors.

In "A Red, Red Rose," Burns uses two similes to describe his love:

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

First, she is like a rose that's newly opened in June. Next, she is like a melody that's sweetly played in tune.

A simile makes a comparison between two things by using the expression "like" or "as." Similes are very common in everyday speech: she's as cool as a cucumber; she's as mad as a wet hen. In the stanza above, Burns compares his love to a rose and also to a sweet melody.

For a simile to work, for it to be meaningful to readers, they must be familiar with the thing that provides the comparison. For instance, if I tell you that this morning, my house was like a three-ring circus, this is only useful if you know what a three-ring circus is.

A metaphor also makes a comparison but without the help of "like" or "as." One thing is another thing. For example, we can turn Burns' similes into metaphors:

My love is a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June.

My love is a melody
That's sweetly played in tune.

Well, you can see why he added "like": in this case, it was needed for the rhythm.

Back to my house: This morning, my house was a three-ring circus! Using a metaphor, an unmediated comparison, turning one thing directly into another, usually provides a stronger comparison.

In a book I've just begun to read, Dianne Warren's Cool Water, I'm watching for original similes and metaphors. Page 4--jackpot! "Word spread like chicken pox."


Here, I'd always thought that word spread like wildfire, but no, it spreads like chicken pox.

Here's another from Warren: [after a hundred-mile horserace] "the insides of his calves [were] as raw as skinned rabbits" (11).

Or this: "He pictured one of the houses that now dotted the landscape--a simple, two-room wooden structure with a single-pitch roof, like a chicken shack" (13). The old cowboy is sleeping on a bed of straw that "became as soft as a feather bed" and "tomorrow was cool and clear, like water on his tongue" (13).

These similes and metaphors provide the vividness that keep us in the dream of the fictional world. Happy hunting!

Cool Water is published by Harper Collins.