Lines on Meeting with Lord Daer by Robert Burns
“Lines on Meeting with Lord Daer” presents Rhymer Robin, or Burns, humorously recording the memorable day when he dined with a Lord. Though he has attended drunken literary gatherings, drunk with priests, and shared drinking with powerful squires, dining with a Peer and an Earl’s son seems an unprecedented elevation. He mockingly imagines raising his bonnet higher in honour of a Lord so tall and socially exalted that he overlooks other members of the Peerage as easily as the speaker looks over his own sonnet. The speaker wishes for Hogarth’s power to depict his own bewildered appearance: staring, stammering, moving awkwardly on “ploughman shanks,” and entering the parlour as though restrained by branks. He withdraws into a corner and watches Lord Daer as if observing some remarkable omen. Yet he finds nothing extraordinary in him beyond good sense, sociability, and the unexpected quality of modesty. Expecting the usual signs of greatness—pride, lordly display, arrogance, and assumption—the speaker discovers none. Lord Daer has no more visible pride, pretension, or state than an honest ploughman. From this encounter, the speaker resolves to meet every rank without anxiety, since an honest and worthy man meeting noble youthful Daer is simply meeting a brother.
By Robert Burns · First published 1787 · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Satirical Poetry, Occasional Poetry · 442 words
First lines
At the house of Professor Dugald Stewart.
This wot ye all whom it concerns, / I, Rhymer Robin, alias Burns, / October twenty-third, / A ne'er-to-be-forgotten day, / Sae far I sprackl'd up the brae, / I dinner'd wi' a Lord.
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Lines on Meeting with Lord Daer is listed on Textopian as a poem by Robert Burns, dated 1787 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Robert Burns
- Date: 1787 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Satirical Poetry, Occasional Poetry, Social Commentary, Scottish Dialect Poetry
- Length: 442 words
- Structure: 1 section, 8 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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Genres
- Lyric Poetry — The work is a short, first-person verse poem expressing Burns's immediate feelings, observations, and social reflections after dining with Lord Daer.
- Satirical Poetry — Burns humorously exaggerates his awe at meeting a peer and mocks expected aristocratic pride, ceremony, and social pretension.
- Occasional Poetry — The poem commemorates a specific event: Burns's meeting and dinner with Lord Daer at Professor Dugald Stewart's house on October 23.
- Social Commentary — Its central theme concerns class distinction, concluding that personal worth and modest conduct matter more than inherited rank.
Tags
Scottish vernacular poetry · eighteenth-century Scotland · Edinburgh salon culture · aristocracy and social rank · class equality · humble narrator · ploughman identity · meeting a nobleman · Lord Daer · Dugald Stewart's house · dining with a lord · social anxiety