Study Guide has to say:

The dominant meter of the ballad stanza is iambic, which means the poem’s lines are constructed in two-syllable segments, called iambs, in which the first syllable is unstressed and the second is stressed. As an example of iambic meter, consider the following line from the poem with the stresses indicated:

That’s sweet / ly play’d / in tune.

This pattern exists most regularly in the trimeter lines of the poem, lines which most often finish the thoughts begun in the previous line. The rhythm’s regularity gives the poem a balanced feel that enhances its musical sound.

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The poem, by Robert Burns, begins with four lines, composed of two similes, both using the word "like" to create the comparison.  First he compares his love to a rose, then he compares his love to a melody.  The second stanza of the poem uses another comparison when poet says he will love his love until the seas go dry.  This is imagery since the reader conceptualizes that this would be a very, very long time.  Burns begins the next stanza by repeating what he said at the end of the previous stanza and adding, for emphasis, that he will continue to love until the rocks are melted by the sun.  This is more imagery and could even be considered some hyperbole since it is exaggeration.  He ends that third stanza with a popular metaphor comparing life to sand running through an hourglass.  The poem ends with the poet's promise to return to his love.  Again, he uses exaggeration, or hyperbole, saying he'll return even though it's ten thousand miles.

Burns employs an array of literary devices in this poem, including simile, imagery, repetition, refrain, end rhyme, apostrophe, anaphora, dialect, hyperbole, and metaphor.

The poem starts with a simile, which is a comparison using the words like or as. The speaker compares his beloved to a "red, red rose" and to a "melody." Both these similes are images, description using any of the five senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.

The poem gains a pleasing sense of rhythm from repetition, refrain, and end rhyme. Repeated words such as "red" and "O my Luve," as well as the refrain "Till a' the seas gang dry" add emphasis to the ideas the poet wants us to remember. Anaphora, a particular kind of repetition in which a word or series of words at the beginning of a line is repeated in the next line, adds to this sense of rhythm. Examples of anaphora are "And fare thee well" in stanza 4 and "So" in stanza 2.

Scottish dialect is an important component of this poem, giving it its richly distinct flavor and capturing the cadences of ordinary, colloquial speech. Phrases such as "Till a' the seas gang dry" (until the seas go dry) and the use of "luve" and "wi'" (with) convey the speaker's Scottish roots.

Another key literary device Burns uses is hyperbole, or exaggeration. The poem is built around exaggerated images, such as the speaker's love lasting until the seas run dry. Even the repetition of "red" in line 1 has the shade of hyperbole—the beloved is not simply like a red rose but is especially so. Finally, the speaker uses a metaphor, a comparison not using the words like or as, when he compares the passage of time to the "sands o' life" running, an image that suggests sands running through an hourglass.

While there are several similes in the poem (a simile is a comparison using "like" or "as"), there is only one metaphor which is located at the end of stanza 3. The speaker says:

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

A metaphor is a comparison where you directly talk about one thing as if it were the thing you are comparing it to. Metaphors negate the "like" or "as" completely. The line "while the sands o' life shall run," for example, is a metaphor.

This line compares the sand moving through the compartments of an hourglass to a person's life span. An hourglass is comprised of two bulbous compartments, one in which is filled with sand. When an hourglass is turned over, the top that is filled with sand slowly drains into the bottom compartment. After one hour, the sand (or the time) has run out. The time running out is meant to represent a person aging. Since the compartment is full and slowly runs out, the comparison suggests that we only have a finite amount of time on this planet. When the time runs out, we face death.

The speaker uses this metaphor to suggest that he will love his "bonnie lass" until the day he dies, which is illustrated with the image of the hourglass running out of time. The goal of this metaphor is to show his lover that, no matter what, he will love her for the remainder of his life.

Robert Burns makes use of similes throughout the poem "A Red, Red Rose," using comparisons to nature to represent the durability and immensity of the speaker’s love.

The poem begins by saying outright that the speaker’s “Luve is like a red, red rose.” Although a single rose is fragile, the rose bush itself blooms every year. Thus, the speaker conveys the beauty of his love and its seeming fragility at times (when the rose petals fall), while at the same time conveying that though it might seem to abate, it will bloom again just as the rose bush does. Moreover, by repeating the word “red” twice, the poem also emphasizes the depth of his love.

From there, the poem compares his love to a melody, a tune. Again, this is a fleeting image and one of the few that does not draw on nature. A tune or a melody is played and then ends. However, just like the rose bush, the tune can be replayed over and over. These similes are in the first stanza when the love is “newly sprung” or young. Young love might seem to be fleeting and so the poet aptly uses these images in the first stanza.

However, moving on to the second stanza, the comparisons are to objects that are not only durable but also immeasurable, signifying the depth and durability of the poet’s love. So “deep” is the love that the poet will love his beloved until “the seas gang dry.” The imagery suggests immensity. The poet moves from a single rose or melody to the vastness of the seas.

This comparison is so important that the poet repeats it in the next stanza. The next few similes are to rocks, sun, and “sands o’life.” Rocks are hard and durable. We use the term “rock solid” to describe something that is meant to last, just as the poet’s love will last. The sun is also durable and reliable. Nevertheless, despite its strength, the rocks remain intact, just as the poet’s love remains intact. The sands of life represent the time the poet has, and his love will endure throughout.

The central metaphor in the poem comes at the end of the third stanza, where the speaker refers to the "sands o' life". This metaphor compares our life on earth to the running sands of an hourglass. What Burns is doing here is to highlight the shortness of our lives. Just as the sand in the hourglass will soon run out, so too will our mortal existence. That being the case, the speaker's love, though passionate and intense, will also one day expire. All the more reason, then, for the speaker and his beloved to love one another while they can in the limited time they have left.

The message illustrated by the "sands o'life" metaphor mirrors that of the "red, red rose" simile. A rose, like the sand in an hourglass, is also destined to pass away before long. Though undoubtedly beautiful, like the speaker's love, it will one day wither away and die, no matter how much care and attention are lavished upon it.

The fleeting nature of the speaker's love gives it an added touch of poignance. The love between him and his beloved may be very passionate, intense, and lushly romantic, but like everything else on this earth it is ultimately not destined to last.

The most important figure of speech in this poem is the simile, which compares two different things using the words "like" or "as." In the first stanza, the speaker compares his love ("Luve") to a "red, red rose, / That's newly sprung in June." That is to say that his love is like the rose at its most vibrant state in summer, its "reddest" color (this is why the word "red" is repeated). As the rose is at its reddest color, his love is at its fullest feeling. The speaker uses another simile to compare his love to a melody that's played in tune. 

In the second stanza, the speaker uses a simile again. He notes that his love is as deep as his lass is beautiful ("bonie"). If she is very beautiful, his love is very deep. 

In the second and third stanzas, the speaker uses hyperbole (exaggeration) to say that he will love her until the seas go dry and until "rocks melt wi' the sun." Although this seems like an eternity, it does have a limitation: "until" the seas dry and rocks melt with the sun. 

O I will love thee still, my Dear,
While the sands o' life shall run. 

These lines are ambiguous. He could be saying that he will love her beyond the end of time, which is another example of hyperbole. He might suppose he could love her beyond the end of time (love being beyond time) but the best way he can express this is with this exaggeration. These lines could also mean that he will love her until the end of time; still, an example of hyperbole since the end of time seems so far away. 

In the last stanza, after professing his love, the speaker notes that he is leaving for a "while." He promises to return even if it were ten thousand miles. Quite difficult to travel ten thousand miles in 1794; therefore, this is also hyperbole. Burns uses these exaggerations (hyperbole) and similes to show the depth and degree of love. 

Imagery is description using any of the five sense of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.

In this poem, the narrator uses imagery when he compares his love to a "red, red rose" that is newly blossomed. This is a sight image, because we can see in our mind's eye this bright, fresh, red rose. It is also a scent image, because we can imagine the sweet, fresh aroma of the rose.

The speaker uses a sound image when he likens his love to

the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.

The speaker then moves to hyperbolic (exaggerated) images to express the depth of his love. He tells the beloved he will love her until the "seas gang [go] dry" and until the rocks melt. We can see in our mind's eye a world of dry seas and melted rocks and know these are events unlikely to happen until the end of the world. This helps us visualize the speaker's deep and faithful love.

The imagery in "A Red, Red Rose" largely evokes nature. The beloved is compared to a red rose in full bloom, which is a traditional symbol of romantic love, and the month of June, the start of summertime. One exception to the nature trend in the imagery is a melody "sweetly played in tune," once again used to emphasize the physical perfection of the beloved. All of these are conventional images in most love poetry, though they give way to more striking images in the second part of the work.

By the poem's halfway point, the imagery takes a turn for the apocalyptic. The speaker swears he will continue to love the object of his affections until the seas go dry, the rocks melt in the sun, and the sands of time run out. By using such drastic images, the speaker conveys the power of his devotion, essentially arguing that it will not end even within a lifetime and will go on even after both of the lovers have died. The images evoke both beauty and awe and give the speaker's love a similar amount of weight. Unlike the nature images in the first part, which emphasize the first flush of ephemeral beauty like the red rose in bloom, these later images suggest extended periods of time and even eternity.

One literary device Burns makes heavy use of in this poem is anaphora. Anaphora occurs when the words at the beginning of a line are repeated. In "A Red, Red Rose," this happens, for example, in the first and third lines when the speaker says:

O my Luve's like ...
O my Luve's like ...

He then likens his love to both a rose and a melody. Anaphora occurs again when the speaker repeats:

Till a' the seas gang dry

All the "ands" that begin lines are also examples of anaphora, and you will find more instances of anaphora as you examine the poem. Anaphora creates a sense of rhythm and emphasis.

The speaker also uses the literary device of apostrophe, which is to directly address an object or absent person. In this case, he addresses his true love. The apostrophe becomes particularly clear in the final stanza:

And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve! /And fare-thee-weel, a while! /And I will come again, my Luve, /Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!

The speaker employs hyperbole or exaggeration in the final line of the poem when he writes that he will return to his love even if he has to travel 10,000 miles. He knows he won't have to journey anywhere near that distance, but the hyperbole emphasizes how much he loves his beloved and the lengths he is willing to go to be with her. You will find other instances of hyperbole as you read the verses.

The poet also uses Scottish dialect or vernacular, which lends a personal, informal feeling to the poem and stresses the intimacy between the speaker and his beloved. Examples of dialect are "bonnie lass" for beautiful girl and "gang" for going.

It sounds as if you are having some difficulty understanding the meaning of the term "literary devices." These are basically ways of organizing language beyond what is necessary to create meaning. Thus devices like meter, rhyme, repetition of sounds, figures of speech, and non-literal uses of words are all "literary devices." Literary critics usually divide these into "figures of sound" and "figures of thought."

In terms of sound, first you could look at meter. The poem consists of four-line stanzas, with the first and third lines written in iambic tetrameter and the second and fourth in iambic trimeter. The stanzas are rhymed ABCB. This scheme, known as "ballad meter," identifies the poem as belonging to the literary genre of the ballad. We also can see examples of alliteration, or repetition of consonant sounds in "red, red rose." 

In terms of figures of thought, Burns uses "simile" or explicit comparison in the initial stanza when he compares the woman to a rose and to a melody. He also uses "hyperbole" or exaggeration in describing how much he loves his beloved.

The structure of this poem is four four lined stanzas, while the rhyme scheme varies in the first half and the second half.  In the first two stanzas, the second and fourth lines rhyme (Stanza 1:  “June” and “tune” and Stanza 2:  “I” and “dry”), while in the last two stanzas, the rhyme pattern features the second and fourth lines rhyming again, but the first and third lines end with the same word.  This helps to create the rhythmic and song like quality to the poem. 

The surface meaning is about a speaker who is naturally in love.  The speaker uses several examples of figurative language to relay the relevancy of love.  For example, the opening line and title compares love to a “red, red rose.”  This simile brings forth the mental picture of vibrancy and intensity, as it links one’s love to a traditional flower of love, the rose. 

This is continued with invocation of how love is a song “in June,” indicating temperate conditions filled with sun.  The length and breadth of the speaker’s love is continued in the second stanza with its comparison to the depth of the “seas.”  The surface meaning concludes with an emphasis of the speaker’s love in the last two stanzas, which serve to reemphasize the intensity and commitment of the speaker’s love. 

The symbolic meaning of the poem is to convey the passion and intensity that is involved in being in love with someone. 

A theme could certainly be that there are many ways to redescribe one’s love, many metaphors or ways of expression which help to clarify what it means to be in love with someone. 

The tone of the poem is exalting of love, joyful of being in its presence, which mirrors the mood of enthusiasm and joy.  In terms of the appreciation of the poem, I think anyone who believes in the power of love could appreciate much of what the poet employs here.  However, there is one dilemma that is present.  There is little to indicate why there is an emotional connection present.  We realize that the speaker is in love and they truly believe in the authenticity of this expression.  However, there is little else to indicate that this love is spiritually or emotionally inclined. 

If we continued to examine the poem in this light, we see that this might be infatuation or a surface type of love.  This might be something that resides in the mind of the reader, but it should be raised in terms of trying to gauge what statement might lie or its level of appreciation.

Robert Burns's poem can also be read as the lyrics to a song. One can readily imagine the speaker singing it to their beloved. The speaker actually changes address within the poem. They begin using third person to speak about their "luve," then switch in stanza two to second person direct address, speaking to their love.

Stanza one uses two similes that employ "like": love is like a rose, and love is like a melody.

In Stanzas two, three, and four, the speaker uses hyperbole (extreme exaggeration) to tell the "luve" how much they love her. "Gang" is colloquial Scottish word for "go." "The sands of life" is also a metaphor for time that refers to an hourglass.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run. [. . .]
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.

"A Red, Red Rose" is a ballad written in four quatrains (four stanzas composed of four lines each). The first and third lines of each stanza are written in iambic tetrameter (tetra - four stressed syllables). These lines stray a bit from strict iambic prosody, but for the most part the entire poem sticks to the iamb which is the pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The second and fourth lines follow iambic trimeter which uses three stressed syllables. 

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June; 

The stressed syllables are: O, Luve's, red, rose, / new-, sprung, June. The musical quality of rhythm is important in this poem because it is about time as much as it is about love. 

In the first stanza, the speaker uses simile to compare his love to a "red, red rose, / That's newly sprung in June." The love he has is fresh, new, and bursting with life. "Red" is repeated to underscore the idea that his love is at its brightest. Given that his love is at its most powerful, being "newly sprung in June," the indication is that this is temporary. Just as the rose's color will fade, his love is subject to the same decay. 

It is also harmonious and musical like a song "sweetly played in tune." One could say that a song is timeless but the song itself, having a beginning and end in time, is also temporary. 

The speaker, recognizing that his love might fade, reassures his beloved saying he will love her "Till a' the seas gang dry." Seemingly, this will be a long time, perhaps until the end of the world. But he doesn't say "forever." So, there may be some indication that even a love as powerful as this has, like the rose and the song, a limit in time. 

Again, the speaker reassures his beloved that he will love her "While the sands o' life shall run." This could mean he will love her for all time or until the end of her or his life. What seemed like a very simple poem about love becomes a philosophical inquiry on time and the question of how love exists in time. Does time limit love? 

In the last stanza, the speaker announces that he will be away from his beloved for "a while" indicating that he will return, but we have no idea how long "a while" really is. However, he says he will return even if he must travel ten thousand miles. 

One could say that the speaker is simply making a pledge that although his love brief (like a newly sprung rose), it is also long-lasting. In other words, maybe it (love) only seems brief because it is experienced in time. Perhaps the speaker is trying to conceive of how to extract this brief moment of vibrant love from time itself, so that it would not be limited by the confines of time. In a modern context, this could be interpreted as wishing to extend the initial "falling in love" feeling longer than the limited time it tends to have. 

The first stanza makes use of the simile in which he compares his "luve" to a red rose.  The simile is evident in the first two lines: "O my Luve's like a red, red rose,/That's newly sprung in June;"  He uses a second simile in that same stanza (the first stanza) to compare his love to a sweet sounding melody when he says: "O my Luve's like the melodie,/That's sweetly play'd in tune."

In the second stanza, Burns makes use of assonance -- the repetition of the vowel sound in the beginning or ending of words.  This is evident in the first line of this stanza: "As fair art thou, my bonie lass."  The "a" sound in "fair" and "lass" are repetitious. He also uses repetition in the last line of the second stanza and the first line of the third stanza:  "Till a' the seas gang dry./Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear."  The third stanza also makes use of personification in the last line which states: "While the sands o' life shall run."

 The final stanza uses repetition in the first three lines which all begin with the same word -- "And". He also makes use of alliteration in the final line with the repetition of the "t" sound:  "Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile."

Unfortunately the excessive use of hyperbole, passionate sentimental similes and a strong love metaphor in the title did not mean faithfulness to Robert Burns! In this love poem 'A Red Red Rose' he may say things like he will love his girl til all the seas 'gang dry,' but in Scotland there must not have been much seawater at that time! Poor old Rab found it almost nigh impossible to be faithful and was falling in love every five minutes! In fact, this poem/song does not have a particularly lovey dovey air - Robert Burns asked for it to be set to the tune of a very popular marching song! (Some critics think this was the 'Major Graham.') However, the imagery in the poem is so vivid that despite Burns changing allegiances, we still love its vividness today.

Let us remember that a symbol is any object, character or action that stands for both itself, its literal meaning, and also for a larger concept that reaches beyond it. If we look at this very famous poem and profession of love, we can see that it contains a number of different symbols. However, perhaps most clearly we can see that the third stanza contains a symbol of the permanence of the speaker's love for his beloved:

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
and the rocks melt wi' the sun!
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
while the sands of life shall run.

There are a number of examples of this constancy, as the speaker uses the symbol of the seas going dry, the rocks melting in the heat of the sun and the sands of life running. Each of these three actions function as a symbol that stand for both themselves literally but also show the immutability of the speaker's affections for his beloved.

Robert Burns published "A Red, Red Rose" in 1794.  It is a well-known Scottish ballad, which means it was intended to be sung. 

The first person narrator of the poem describes is lover in beautiful and complimentary terms. Using two similes in the first verse, he compares his lady to the beauty of a red rose blooming [notice it is not just a red rose but a red, red rose for emphasis] in spring and also a lovely song which is sung sweetly.

In the next stanza, the poet uses hyperbole which is an obvious and deliberate exaggeration not to be taken literally since it is exaggeration for the sake of emphasis. First,  he says that his love will last until all the seas run dry. To further emphasize his loves endurance, he will love this beautiful girl until the rocks are melted by the sun.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my Dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry.

To finalize his point, Burns tells her that his love will last until the sands of his life run out.  Here he refers to the hour glass with the sands running through counting the seconds.  Then, the poet bids farewell to his sweetheart, promising that he will return to her again, even if he is 10,000 miles away.

Through his use of unusual comparisons and exaggerations, this has become an often quoted love poem.  His  vocabulary choices for the representation of the girl are quite lovely: a rose, a sweet melody, a bonny lass.

Background

The poet's background may explain part of the meaning of the poem.  For his time, Burns was rather promiscuous.  He did love a young woman who became pregnant with his twins.  Her parents refused his marriage proposal, so Burns set out to sail the seas.  When he did return, Burns married the young woman.  Between writing poetry and farming, Burns spent the rest of his brief life with his lady love. 

Many similes are used in Robert Burns' poem "A Red, Red Rose". The first one, the title, compares love to a rose. It is an obvious comparison to the beauty and delicacy of the flower. The second simile is "My love is like a melody that's sweetly sung in tune". Here Burns compares love to a song that contains no discord. It is also important to deconstruct that he does not say "harmony". He uses the word "melody" which insinuates to primary attraction of the song, so to say. The melody is what the listener pays the most attention to and recognizes more easily. There are a couple to get you started. Try looking for more similes and metaphors in the poem.

Burns had a deep interest in preserving Scottish verse and dialect, which he reproduced in his poems. "A Red, Red Rose" is a part of that project of focusing on his own culture, rather than looking back to the Greeks and Romans, as was commonly done at that time. According to the British Library website, which owns a manuscript copy of the poem, Burns thought the verses were "simple and wild." He sold the poem as a song to publisher Pietro Urbani, who reported that Burns found the lyrics by hearing them from a "country girl" who sang them in a striking way.

This borrowing from an anonymous rural resident puts the poem in the category of folk literature, showing Burns's attentiveness to the words, songs, and stories of the common people. Up until his time, such people were largely ignored by the literati or used for comic purposes. In taking them and their art seriously, Burns became an influence on English Romantic poets, such as William Wordsworth, who made the simple, common person the centerpiece of much of his poetry.

Though Burns's poem is written largely in standard English, he weaves in Scottish dialect, which helps give the poem its distinctive flavor as well as preserving archaic or soon to be archaic forms of speech.