Nothing in "Farewell to Ravelrig" tells us why the speaker is leaving, and that silence is useful. The poem is not about an event. It is about a feeling: the ache of parting from a place that has come to stand for youth, goodness and calm. The opening line sets this out at once. He "ne'er could part" from Ravelrig "but wi' a dowie heart". *Dowie* is a Scots word for sad or low-spirited, and it sounds heavier and more homely than "sorrowful" would.
The central idea is that the place and the speaker's own moral life are bound together. Ravelrig is where "innocence my steps did guide", and the second stanza says "conscious peace" was always found there. Here "conscious" seems to mean a clear conscience, though that is a reading rather than a certainty. Either way, the landscape is more than scenery. The speaker remembers it as somewhere goodness came easily. Leaving it means losing that, which is why the heart is *dowie*.
The construction supports this. The poem is sixteen lines of rhymed couplets, each line a short, steady beat of about eight syllables (*part/heart*, *days/braes*, *guide/glide*). Couplets suit the subject because each rhyme closes quickly and neatly, like a small contented sigh. The poem also never quite gets into its stride as an argument. The first sentence begins "When I think on the happy days", but the main clause it should lead to never arrives. Instead the sentence slides into description: streams, braes, trees, flowers. It is as if memory takes over from grammar, and the speaker gets lost in the scene he meant to say goodbye to.
The tenses show the same drifting. The first stanza is mostly past ("did guide", "did glide"), but the second moves into the present: "the tuneful tribe doth sing". For a moment the birds are singing now, as though the place is still in front of him. Then "was ever found" slips back to the past. The poem keeps flickering between what was and what still seems to be.
The imagery is gentle and mostly about sound and movement. "Murmuring streams" that "sweetly glide" use soft, liquid consonants, so the lines seem to flow. The birds are "lightly flitting on the wing", and the line itself flits. *Sweet* returns again and again: "Sweet Ravelrig", "sweetly glide", "sweetest flow'rs", "Sweet be thy former owner's rest". The repetition may look plain, but it works like a refrain, a single warm note held through the poem. The flowers "fend the bees", meaning they sustain or provide for them, which makes the place a small economy of care where everything looks after something else. "Tuneful tribe" is a polite, stock way of saying "birds", and it sits beside blunt Scots words like *braes* (hillsides) and *wi'*. The result is a blend of formal poetic diction and everyday speech, and the second gives the first some warmth.
The ending is the most interesting turn. A farewell poem might be expected to end in regret or even envy of whoever stays. Instead it becomes a blessing. The speaker wishes rest on "thy former owner" and peace on "him that's now possess't / Of all thy beauties great and small". The last line, "Lang may he live to bruik them all!", uses *bruik*, a Scots word meaning to enjoy or have the use of something. It is generous, and it fits the poem's values. The peace he valued at Ravelrig is something he hopes to pass on, so the word "peace" moves from a memory in the second stanza to a gift in the closing lines. The poem's sadness is real, but it is not selfish.
As for significance, this is a small, modest poem, and it should be read that way. It does not offer a deep argument or a dramatic story. What it does offer is a clear example of a familiar kind of verse, the address to a beloved place, handled with warmth and restraint. Its mixture of Scots and polished English gives it a distinct voice. Its most memorable quality is its good manners: a speaker who, even while leaving, wishes the place well and hopes it will be enjoyed by those who remain.