Sweet Afton

Robert Burns

Teacher card

Published: 1786, in Poems and Songs of Robert Burns
Length: 24 lines, 196 words, 1 word in 20 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 5–6. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: love, sun
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

Flow gently, sweet Afton! amang thy green braes,Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise;My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

Thou stockdove whose echo resounds thro’ the glen,Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,Thou green-crested lapwing thy screaming forbear,I charge you, disturb not my slumbering Fair.

How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills,Far mark’d with the courses of clear, winding rills;There daily I wander as noon rises high,My flocks and my Mary’s sweet cot in my eye.

How pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,Where, wild in the woodlands, the primroses blow;There oft, as mild Ev’ning weeps over the lea,The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.

Thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,And winds by the cot where my Mary resides;How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave,As, gathering sweet flowerets, she stems thy clear wave.

Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes,Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays;My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

Robert Burns (died 1796), Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (1786), lines 19010–19038 of Project Gutenberg ebook #1279. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for names in posy cardsin posy · 24 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
posy.popplepoetry.com/sources#bu-afton

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/burns-sweet-afton · popplepoetry.com