---
title: "A Mother’s Lament"
subtitle: "For the Death of Her Son"
author: "Robert Burns"
form: "Poem"
year: "1788"
location: "Mossgiel"
source: "Project Gutenberg #1279 — Poems and Songs of Robert Burns"
source_url: "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1279/pg1279.txt"
canonical_url: "https://robert-burns.com/poems/a-mothers-lament/"
---

# A Mother’s Lament

### For the Death of Her Son

## Poem
Fate gave the word, the arrow sped,  
And pierc’d my darling’s heart;  
And with him all the joys are fled  
Life can to me impart.

By cruel hands the sapling drops,  
In dust dishonour’d laid;  
So fell the pride of all my hopes,  
My age’s future shade.

The mother-linnet in the brake  
Bewails her ravish’d young;  
So I, for my lost darling’s sake,  
Lament the live-day long.

Death, oft I’ve feared thy fatal blow.  
Now, fond, I bare my breast;  
O, do thou kindly lay me low  
With him I love, at rest!

---

Source: [Project Gutenberg #1279 — Poems and Songs of Robert Burns](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1279/pg1279.txt)  
Canonical HTML: https://robert-burns.com/poems/a-mothers-lament/