Bruce Meyer is the director of the creative writing program at the University ofToronto. He has taught at several Canadian universities and is the author of three collections of poetry. In the following essay, Meyer suggests that the poet desires to multiply the images of his beloved, to elevate her above mortal beings, and to provide a test to prove his love.

It seems extremely clinical, if not criminal to examine something as tender and beautiful as Robert Burns's "A Red, Red Rose" under the scrutiny of critical consideration. So delicately, so intricately is it wrought that the poem is, in itself, a frail rose. Yet the poem's delicacy, its fragility, is achieved through a wonderful series of similes that flow from one image into the next and build an argument picture by picture to form, not only a masterpiece in itself, but a wonderful addition to...