Wae Is My Heart
written in 1794
Wae Is My Heart - meaning Summary
Longing and Sorrow in Love
The poem presents a speaker lamenting sustained heartbreak and loneliness. He contrasts past pleasures of love with present sorrow, describing a 'bruised heart' that throbs and seeks relief. Memory of a specific pastoral scene — a stream and a "bonie castle-green" — connects him to a beloved (Phillis) who wanders and thinks of her, implying mutual feeling but continued separation. The tone moves from plaintive grief toward weary resignation: comfort seems possible only in reunion or in the final rest that might end his suffering.
Read Complete AnalysesWae is my heart, and the tear's in my e'e; Lang, lang joys been a stranger to me: Forsaken and friendless my burden I bear, And the sweet voice o' pity ne'er sounds in my ear. Love, thou hast pleasures, and deep hae I loved; Love thou hast sorrows, and sair hae I proved: But this bruised heart that now bleeds in my breast, I can feel by its throbbings will soon be at rest. Oh, if I were, where happy I hae been; Down by yon stream, and yon bonie castle-green: For there he is wandring, and musing on me, Wha wad soon dry the tear frae his Phillis's e'e.
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