Lyric Poem · Love
A Mother’s Lament for her Son’s Death
by Robert Burns
1FATE gave the word, the arrow sped,
2 And pierc’d my darling’s heart;
3And with him all the joys are fled
4 Life can to me impart.
5By cruel hands the sapling drops,
6 In dust dishonour’d laid;
7So fell the pride of all my hopes,
8 My age’s future shade.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“A Mother’s Lament for her Son’s Death” by Robert Burns — quilloak.com/poems/a-mothers-lament-for-her-sons-death
Quick facts
- Poem
- A Mother’s Lament for her Son’s Death
- Poet
- Robert Burns
- Length
- 16 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Love, Death & Loss, Hope
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 16 lines · 4 quatrains
- Line length
- Consistent with common metre. Alternating eight- and six-syllable lines — the hymn stanza (8.6.8.6), the most-used quatrain in English verse.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Robert Burns1759–1796
- Source record
- PoetryDBA Mother’s Lament for her Son’s Death by robert-burns, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 1a6ff8d29fa36ac4…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.