In "A Red, Red Rose," the speaker uses two types of figurative language to express his love. First he uses hyperbole, a type of figurative language that exaggerates for emphasis or humor, to declare his love to his "bonnie lass," or beautiful girl. Second, he uses a metaphor, which compares one thing to another without using the words "like" or "as." Four separate promises are made in the poem.
1. "And I will luve thee still, my dear, / Till a’ the seas gang dry." To translate this into everyday speech, it means, "I will love you until all the seas dry up." Since the seas will never dry up, this is hyperbole, an exaggerated way of saying, "I will love you forever."
2. I will love you until "the rocks melt wi’ the sun" means "I will love you until the heat of the sun melts rocks...
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on earth." Again, this will never happen, so it is another hyperbolic way of saying the speaker will love his girlfriend forever.
3. "While the sands o’ life shall run" is a metaphor comparing one's lifetime to an hourglass. If all the days of his life are like sands in an hourglass, he will love his girl until the very last one. He will love her until the day he dies.
4. "And I will come again, my luve, / Though it were ten thousand mile" is another hyperbole. This means that, although he must leave his love now, he will return to her, even if he has to travel ten thousand miles to do so. Nowadays someone might actually be separated by ten thousand miles from a loved one. For example, the distance from Scotland to parts of Australia is 10,000 miles. When Robert Burns was writing these poems in Scotland in the 1700s, not many people would travel that far from home, but the literal distance isn't really the point. Using such a large round number means the same as saying, "no matter how far I have to go." So the speaker is promising to return despite the distance that will be separating them.
Using hyperbole and metaphor, the speaker promises to always love his "bonnie lass" and to return to her no matter how far away he must go from her side.
What promise does the lover make in the poem "A Red, Red Rose"?
The promise made by the lover, who is also the speaker of the poem, is that he will love his beloved until “the seas gang dry” (line 8). He claims that he will continue to love her until the very oceans run out of water. This is an example of hyperbole, or overstatement, exaggerating the strength of his love in order to emphasize the truth of how strong it is.
Further, he says that he will continue to love her until “the rocks melt wi’ the sun” and that he will love her as long as “the sands o’ life shall run” (lines 10, 12). The first promise, the claim that he will love his beloved until the sun melts the rocks of the earth, is something that is as unlikely to happen as the evaporation of all the water in the seas. Thus, it is another example of hyperbole. The second of these two promises includes a metaphor in which life is compared to the sand in an hourglass; when the sand runs out, having all fallen into the bottom part of the glass, our lifetime has run out as well. The speaker promises that he will love his beloved “while the sands [of his] life shall run”—for as long as he is alive.