Auld Rob Morris
written in 1792
Auld Rob Morris - meaning Summary
Unrequited Love Across Class
The poem presents a speaker pining for the daughter of Auld Rob Morris, an heiress whose beauty and simplicity he admires. He recognizes a rigid class barrier: her father is a laird while his own family is poor, making his courtship hopeless. Pastoral, affectionate images heighten the contrast between idealized love and social reality. The speaker alternates between tender admiration and inward anguish, sleeplessness and wandering, and ends in resigned despair. It reads as a concise meditation on thwarted desire and the pain that social inequality inflicts on personal longing.
Read Complete AnalysesThere's Auld Rob Morris that wons in yon glen, He's the King o' gude fellows, and wale o' auld men; He has gowd in his coffers, he has owsen and kine, And ae bonie lass, his dawtie and mine. She's fresh as the morning, the fairest in May; She's sweet as the e'enin amang the new hay; As blythe and as artless as the lambs on the lea, And dear to my heart as the light to my e'e. But oh! she's an Heiress, auld Robin's a laird; And my daddie has nought but a cot-house and yard; A wooer like me maunna hope to come speed; The wounds I must hide that will soon be my dead. The day comes to me, but delight brings me nane; The night comes to me, but my rest it is gane; I wander my lane like a night-troubled ghaist, And I sigh as my heart it wad burst in my breast. O had she but been of a laigher degree, I then might hae hop'd she wad smil'd upon me! O how past descriving had then been my bliss, As now my distraction nae words can express!
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