John Come Kiss Me Now - Analysis

A love song that refuses to wait

Burns’s speaker makes a bold, playful claim: real courtship is physical, mutual, and unashamed, not a slow parade of polite words. The poem opens with an insistence that’s almost breathless—come kiss me now, now, now—and that urgency sets the rules of this relationship. John already knows what he’s doing: weel ye ken the way to woo. In other words, the speaker isn’t asking to be convinced; she’s asking him to act on an understanding they already share.

“Court and compliment” versus the speaker’s kind of wooing

The middle stanzas stage a small argument against conventional romance. The speaker lists what some will do—court and compliment—as if that sort of talk is a public performance, a little empty beside what she wants. Even when kissing appears in the list—ither some will kiss and daut—it’s presented as one option among many social gestures. Her own preference is more direct and less decorous: that’s the way I like to do, meaning to hause (embrace) in someone’s arms. The poem’s energy comes from how calmly she claims that appetite as a personal taste, not a guilty secret.

The “gudeman” line: desire seeking legitimacy

A key tension runs through the phrase I will mak o’ my gudeman, / My ain gudeman. She isn’t only chasing a kiss; she’s also speaking the language of marriage and belonging. That can sound like a turn toward respectability—she’ll make John her husband—yet she immediately shrugs off moral judgment with it is nae faute. The poem holds two impulses at once: wanting public sanction (my ain gudeman) while still insisting that what she wants physically needs no apology.

“Now” and “by and by”: a flirtation with delay

The refrain returns unchanged, and that repetition works like a teasing drumbeat. The speaker demands now, then allows by and by, but only because John already ken the path to her. The apparent contradiction—immediate hunger alongside a little patience—feels less like indecision than flirtation: she offers him time only to pull him back into the same conclusion. By ending where it began, the poem suggests that the argument is settled; the only remaining “wooing” is the kiss itself.