Robert Burns (Gutenberg Index)

Robert Burns is Scotland's national poet, and this collection gathers the essential works of the bard who died too young at 37 in 1796. Here you will find the famous - "Auld Lang Syne," still sung at New Year's celebrations worldwide, "Scots Wha Hae" with its revolutionary fire, "To a Mouse" with its gorgeous line "the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men," and "Tam o' Shanter," a tale of devilry and daring. But also the love songs, the satirical blows at hypocrisy, the poems written in broad Scots that sound like no one else before or since. Burns wrote with an honesty that feels modern: about desire, about mortality, about the land and the working people who tended it. His genius was making the local universal - a farmer from Ayrshire speaking across centuries about what it means to be alive. This collection captures the full range of his brief, blazing career. For anyone who wants to meet the poet who helped birth the Romantic movement and shaped how the world thinks about Scotland.