Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An’ foolish notion.

These lines come from Robert Burns’s Scots poem “To a Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet, at Church” (1786). In the poem, Burns notices a louse crawling on a well-dressed woman during a church service and addresses the insect with wry moral reflection. The incident becomes a satirical occasion to puncture vanity and social pretension: outward respectability can conceal unflattering realities, and self-regard is often blind. Burns’s setting—Kirk (church) and its strict social gaze—sharpens the irony, turning a small, comic observation into a broader comment on human self-deception and the value of humility.

Burns imagines a divine “gift” that would let people see themselves as others see them. The wish implies that self-perception is distorted by pride, habit, and wishful thinking; an external viewpoint would correct those illusions. The lines balance humor and moral seriousness: the “blunder” is both the literal embarrassment of the lady unaware of the louse and the larger human tendency to cling to “foolish notion” about our own dignity or virtue. The enduring force of the passage lies in its democratic edge—rank and finery do not protect anyone from ridicule—and in its practical ethic: clearer self-knowledge would make us kinder, wiser, and less vain.

1) “O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as others see us!”
2) “To see ourselves as others see us.”
3) “O would some power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us.”