The Full Text of “Ae Fond Kiss”
1Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
2Ae fareweel, and then forever!
3Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
4Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
5Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
6While the star of hope she leaves him?
7Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me;
8Dark despair around benights me.
9I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,
10Naething could resist my Nancy;
11But to see her was to love her;
12Love but her, and love forever.
13Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
14Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
15Never met—or never parted—
16We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
17Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!
18Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!
19Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
20Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure!
21Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
22Ae fareweel, alas, forever!
23Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
24Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee!
The Full Text of “Ae Fond Kiss”
1Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
2Ae fareweel, and then forever!
3Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
4Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
5Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
6While the star of hope she leaves him?
7Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me;
8Dark despair around benights me.
9I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,
10Naething could resist my Nancy;
11But to see her was to love her;
12Love but her, and love forever.
13Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
14Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
15Never met—or never parted—
16We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
17Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!
18Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!
19Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
20Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure!
21Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
22Ae fareweel, alas, forever!
23Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
24Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee!
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“Ae Fond Kiss” Introduction
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"Ae Fond Kiss" is a poem by Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet, that was written in 1791 and published in 1792. The poem, which describes two lovers parting, was sent by Burns to a woman he loved just before she left Scotland, never to see Burns again. The poem has the highly regular structure, meter, and rhyme scheme of a song lyric, and Burns intended it to be set to the tune of a Scottish folk song.
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“Ae Fond Kiss” Summary
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The speaker begins by asking his beloved for one more loving kiss before they have to separate; this kiss will be their goodbye before they must leave each other forever. The speaker promises that he will honor his beloved's memory when he weeps with intense sorrow. Torn between wistful memories of their happy days past and anguish that these days will never come again, he will offer all these emotions as a tribute to her. The speaker expresses disbelief that anyone could claim to be truly unhappy so long as they still have the slightest possibility of good fortune in the future. But the speaker is truly unhappy because he has no hope of any such future happiness to inspire him to keep going; the only thing he can feel, or imagine feeling, is hopeless sorrow.
Even though he is now suffering for it, the speaker doesn't criticize himself for having been too easily attracted to his beloved. No one could have seen her and not been deeply attracted to her. Just seeing her would be enough to make anyone fall in love with her; and once you were in love with her, you would love only her, and you would love her always. The speaker does reflect, though, on what would have happened if they had never loved each other with such deep affection, or with such intensity that it made them lose sight of everything else in their lives. If they had never met—or if they had fallen in love but never had to separate from each other–then they would never have had to suffer this devastating loss.
The speaker then fondly bids goodbye to his beloved, reminding her that she is the first woman he has truly loved and the most beautiful woman he has ever seen; she is also the person he admires and cherishes most. He wishes her delight, prosperity, contentment, happiness, love, and bliss in her future life. He then asks, once more, for one more kiss before they have to separate and laments that this kiss really is their goodbye forever. Finally, he reminds her again that he will continue to remember her through the terrible sorrow he feels at losing her, and continue honoring her through his memories of past happiness with her and anguish at future grief without her.
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“Ae Fond Kiss” Themes
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The Cost of Love
In “Ae Fond Kiss,” the speaker confronts the pain that comes with losing a lover. The emotional distress of this is so great that the speaker asks himself whether love is worth its cost, or whether it is better simply never to love at all.
At first, the speaker seems to think that love isn’t worth the pain of heartbreak, and wishes he had never fallen in love in the first place. But then he changes course, agreeing to pay the emotional price of parting all over again in return for just one more moment with his beloved. Thus, while people might ask themselves if love is worth the cost, the poem suggests that the answer almost doesn’t matter: once you are in love, you are at the mercy of your desire.
In the first stanza, the speaker reveals how hopeless his life is about to become since he is losing his beloved for good. The speaker asks his beloved for one more “fond kiss” before they are “sever[ed],” or separated, “forever.” After this kiss, all he will have left are the “heart-wrung tears” and “sighs and groans” that her memory brings. The speaker then says no one can “grieve” too deeply if they have some “star of hope” left. But the speaker is not just losing his beloved’s company for now; he’s losing any hope of seeing her again. As such, his grief is deep, sinking him in “dark despair.”
In the next stanza, the pain of this loss drives the speaker to ask himself if it would have been better never to have loved her, or even met her, at all. If they “[h]ad … never lov’d” so affectionately or intensely, then they would “ne’er [have] been broken-hearted.” But in fact, there are two ways he could have avoided this pain: if they had never met, or if they had "never parted." There would be no painful cost to love if they could just stay together. But, similarly, there would be no painful cost if they had never met in the first place.
By placing these two alternatives together in the same line, the speaker suggests that he would have been equally happy with either option—lifelong joy with the beloved or never having met her at all—just so long as he could escape the pain love can bring. If the speaker’s main goal is to escape this pain, he seems to say that love is not worth its high cost.
In the final stanza, however, the speaker returns once more to the beloved. Whether or not he would have been better off never meeting her, he cannot resist even one more moment with her now, even if that moment renews the pain of parting. After seeming to wish they had never met, the speaker still asks her for one more “fond kiss”—even though the kiss in the first stanza was meant to be their last. He cannot help his desire to be with her, although each moment of their farewell draws out the pain of that farewell.
Significantly, he frames his pain as a willing offering to his beloved. With the word “pledge,” he turns his “heart-wrung tears” into a cup of wine with which he toasts her. Similarly, with the word “wage,” he turns his “sighs and groans” into the price he pays for loving her. Repeating these lines from the first stanza as the final lines give them particular weight, emphasizing that the speaker is willing to pay this price, high though it is.
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Love and Selflessness
In “Ae Fond Kiss,” the speaker reveals the nature of truly generous love for another person. At the start of the poem, the speaker is focused on himself and his own pain. This pain comes from parting with someone he truly loves. But as the poem goes on, he shifts his attention to the beloved and her experience. Although for him, pain is a sign of his true love for her, he does not wish her to suffer the same pain. Rather, he wishes her joy, love, and the pleasure love brings—even though that love can no longer be with him. Genuine love, the poem implies, thus requires selflessness; it means wishing happiness for the beloved, even if they find that happiness with someone else.
In the first stanza, the speaker declares that parting from the beloved leaves his life dark and without hope. The speaker knows he is leaving his beloved “forever.” With this separation, life “leaves him … nae cheerfu’ twinkle,” no “star of hope.” He describes the “tears,” “groans,” and “dark despair” he will suffer in this hopeless state. The stanza is focused on the speaker’s own emotional experience, emphasized by its repetition of the pronoun “me.” His hopelessness is confirmed by the fact that he will never find love with anyone else. No future happiness will alleviate the heartbreak he now feels.
In the second stanza, the speaker affirms that he can only ever love this one woman—“[l]ove but her”—and that he will “love [her] forever.” The pain of parting from her leads him to reflect that he never would have been “broken-hearted” if they had “[n]ever met.” But this reflection, in turn, leads him to consider his beloved’s experience as well as his own. “We had ne’er been broken-hearted,” he says. The pronouns in the second half of this stanza are all “we.” The speaker realizes that he is not the only one who’s suffering; she is suffering, too.
Ultimately, the speaker's reflection on the pain of lost love leads him to wish that his beloved will escape this pain—and that she will find love again. Thus even as the speaker's pain despair partly from the faithfulness of his love, the fact that he will “[l]ove but her … forever,” he does not ask the same faithfulness from his beloved. Instead, he hopes that she will find “joy … [p]eace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure.” That is, he would rather she find a new love with someone else than maintain love for him alone and suffer “[d]ark despair” from their separation.
The speaker, for his part, shows no sign of wanting or expecting such a new love for himself. He repeats in the final lines that he will continue offering “sighs and groans” to his beloved. But he maintains that he does not wish her to suffer what he suffers. His wish that she find a new love shows that he values her happiness more than her exclusive attachment to him. This wish—that she enjoy love and happiness even though it must be with someone else—is a sign that his love for her is truly selfless.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Ae Fond Kiss”
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Lines 1-4
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.The opening lines establish the poem's dramatic setting: the speaker is a man addressing his beloved just before they have to leave each other for good. In the poem's first two lines, the speaker is torn between cherishing and extending the blissful present moment as much as possible, and imagining the pain that their inevitable parting will bring.
Lines 1 and 2 share a parallel structure. Both begin with "Ae" (meaning "One"), creating anaphora. More broadly, in the first half of each line the speaker fixes his attention on his interaction with his beloved in the present moment: they share a "fond kiss," they bid each other "farewell." There is a pause (caesura) in the middle of each line, and with the word "then," the speaker looks forward into the future when they must "sever," or separate, "forever."
This parallel structure serves several different purposes. Repeating the same general idea (lovers parting) over two lines emphasizes the importance of this idea, which literally takes up more space on the page. It also allows the speaker to explore and develop different aspects of the idea. The kiss isn't just another kiss, it's a farewell kiss. And this parting isn't just for a week or a month, it's forever. If the reader thought the situation in line 1 was tragic, they realize that it's even more tragic after line 2!
Lines 3 and 4 share a similar parallel structure as well. Both start by describing the bitter passions the speaker will experience without his beloved—"tears," "sighs," "groans"—and both end with "I'll (wage/pledge) thee." By repeating this same phrase at the end of the line (epistrophe), the speaker reinforces the idea that there will still be a connection between himself and his beloved—between "I" and "thee"—even after they have parted.
His anguished tears and groans, his sighs for happier past days, aren't just emotional outbursts he needs to release; he frames them as active ways that he will continue memorializing his beloved. The verb "pledge" often refers to toasting someone and drinking to their health. The speaker transforms his tears into wine in a cup that he will use to toast and honor his beloved. Similarly, the speaker transforms his "sighs and groans" into "wage[s]" he gives to his beloved. He frames his grief not as mere emotional discomfort but as the price he pays for love.
The rhyme scheme reinforces the parallelism between each pair of lines. The poem is written in rhyming couplets, AABBCC, etc. The similarity in sound between the final words of each couplet helps the reader see their similarity in sense. The couple must say goodbye or sever; they must say goodbye forever. The speaker will both pledge and wage his grief to his beloved.
These first four lines also establish the poem's meter. The poem is written in trochaic tetrameter, meaning there are four trochees (DUM-da) per line:
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.The meter is extremely regular throughout the poem, which creates a sense of calmness and composure. The speaker is deeply moved, but he not in the grips of uncontrollable emotion that breaks the pattern of the lines. This quiet tone is also enhanced by the line endings. The trochaic meter means that the last syllable of each line is unstressed (a.k.a., a feminine ending), as opposed to the more common iambic meter, which stresses the last syllable. The feminine endings mean that each line sounds as though it's going quiet or dying off as it reaches its end--appropriate for a poem focused on saying goodbye.
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Lines 5-8
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me. -
Lines 9-12
I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,
Naething could resist my Nancy;
But to see her was to love her;
Love but her, and love forever. -
Lines 13-16
Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met—or never parted—
We had ne'er been broken-hearted. -
Lines 17-20
Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure! -
Lines 21-24
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas, forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee!
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“Ae Fond Kiss” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Parallelism
Almost every line of the poem features some form of parallelism. Many of the line pairs share parallel syntax. Take lines 1-4, for example:
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.There is strong parallelism between lines 1-2 and then between lines 3-4. Each line is divided into two parts, and the parts parallel each other. Lines 3-4, for instance, both begin with a phrase that describes the speaker's emotions ("Deep in heart-wrung tears," "Warring sighs and groans)," pause with a caesura, and conclude with a clause, "I'll [pledge/wage] thee," that describes how he will offer up these emotions to the beloved.
The parallelism serves several functions in the poem. The two parallel lines provide essentially two statements of the same general idea, and the restatement gives further emphasis to that idea. The parallelism also develops that idea further, giving the speaker the chance to reveal new aspects of the original thought. In lines 17-18, for example, the speaker declares:
Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!The first phrase of line 18 parallels the first phrase of line 17 because it repeats it exactly (making this anaphora), emphasizing the fact that the speaker is not merely uttering a conventional but goodbye but that he really, truly does hope that his beloved will be happy in the future.
The second phrase of each line describes the beloved, with line 18 further developing the thoughts of line 17. The speaker may have such strong feelings for his beloved because she is the "first" woman he has ever cared for so much and the first woman he has ever found so fair, or attractive. But those are not the only reasons why his love is so strong. She is the first woman he's cared for so much because she has the "best" or most admirable qualities. She is not only very beautiful but very "dear" to him.
Finally, the parallelism provides a high degree of regularity in the poem. The parallel structures and syntax help ensure the same number of syllables and pattern of stresses in each line. This regularity makes it easy to set the lines to a repeated musical tune, as Burns intended when he wrote the poem.
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Antithesis
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Epistrophe
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Anaphora
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Diacope
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Extended Metaphor
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Refrain
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Consonance
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Caesura
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Rhetorical Question
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"Ae Fond Kiss" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Ae
- Sever
- Fareweel
- Heart-wrung
- Pledge
- Thee
- Wage
- Nae
- Cheerfu'
- Lights me
- Benights
- Ne'er
- Partial
- Fancy
- Naething
- But
- Lov'd
- Sae
- Kindly
- Weel
- Thou
- Thine
- Ilka
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One
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Ae Fond Kiss”
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Form
The poem is divided first of all into three stanzas of eight lines each (making them octaves):
Stanza 1: lines 1-8
Stanza 2: lines 9-16
Stanza 3: lines 17-24There are several other important structures within the stanzas as well. Each stanza can be divided in half, into two groups of four lines (quatrains). Lines 1-4, 5-8, 9-12, 13-16, 17-20, and 21-24 also form complete units both in terms of syntax and thematic ideas. For example, lines 5-8 focus on the theme of hope and hopelessness and use epistrophe to connect the four lines together.
Similarly, each quatrain also divides in half, into two groups of two rhyming lines (couplets). The rhyme and the speaker's frequent use of parallel structure connect the two lines within each couplet. For example, lines 17-18 are both used to say goodbye to the beloved and to address her fine qualities, and both begin "Fare thee well" (anaphora) and use parallel syntax to list the qualities ("first and fairest," "best and dearest").
This highly organized form (couplets; quatrains; octaves) serves several purposes. The clearly marked quatrains give the speaker an opportunity to explore a number of different aspects of love, from possible regret at the past to fond wishes for the future. The couplets allow the speaker to express an idea in two different ways, developing new aspects of the idea from one line to the next. For example, lines 11 and 12 both indicate the powerful effect that Nancy has on those around her. But while line 11 simply states that anyone would love her, line 12 further develops this idea to say that one would love only her and love her always. Overall, then, the form allows the speaker both breadth and depth in his exploration of love and the emotions it brings.
The regular form also makes the poem a lyric, a poem that can be set to music (like Burns' "A Red, Red Rose"). The poem was, indeed, published as a song, with a musical score, in a collection of Scottish songs called the Scots Musical Museum.
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Meter
The poem is written in trochaic tetrameter, meaning there are four trochees—poetic feet with a stressed-unstressed beat pattern—per line. Take lines 3-4:
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.As is common in poetry, the speaker uses the stressed syllables to focus attention on particularly important words in each line. Here, for instance, the stresses pick out "Deep ... heart ... tears" and "War ... sighs ... groans," emphasizing the speaker's sorrowful emotions.
The meter is highly regular. Every line begins with a stressed syllable, and every line ends with an unstressed syllable; every line contains eight syllables and is end-stopped. The regular meter makes it easy to set the poem to music, as the poet himself specified when he first wrote and published it. But it also shapes the reader's perception of the speaker's emotional state. If the meter were highly irregular, constantly breaking the pattern of stresses, altering enjambed and end-stopped lines, adding or taking away syllables, etc., this irregularity might suggest that the speaker was in some state of emotional turbulence. The speaker of this poem is certainly grieving, but the tone is calmer and quieter more than it is overwrought and frantic.
The trochaic meter also contributes to this tone. The lines all end with unstressed syllables, resulting in feminine endings throughout (from the example quoted above: "pledge thee"). This creates a sense that each line is growing quiet and dying off as it nears its end—an appropriate sound for describing the "death" of a relationship and the quiet grief the speaker feels.
Many of the lines also feature a caesura in the middle. These drawn-out pauses slow the line down, as does the full stop at the end of each line. The speaker, too, is trying to slow down time as the moment of parting draws near. He asks for one more kiss in the poem's first line, as though this will be their last kiss, only to ask for still another kiss in line 21, delaying their goodbye still further. The poem's slow speed of reading reflects both the somber emotional tone and the speaker's own desire to experience this moment as slowly as possible.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem is written in rhyming couplets, making the rhyme scheme of each eight-line stanza:
AABBCCDD
This pattern repeats in every stanza.
The rhyme here should be considered to include the whole last foot of the line (that is, the final trochee, with both its final stressed and unstressed syllable—"pledge thee"/"wage thee" rather than just "thee"/"thee"). As such, several of the rhymes are slant rhymes (lines 3-4, 11-12, 17-18, 23-24). In "fairest"/"dearest," for example, the stressed syllables ("fair" and "dear") do not rhyme perfectly, though they share a consonant sound (consonance). Most of the rhymes, however, are perfect rhymes (like "sever" and "-ever"), with some of the rhymes even including repetitions of the same word ("thee," "me"). The highly regular rhyme scheme and the perfect rhymes enhance the poem's lyric quality, making it easy to set to music.
Arranging the rhymes in rhyming couplets serves several functions. On the most basic level, the couplet, as the name suggests, reflects the couple at the center of the poem; each end word is part of a pair, just as the speaker and his beloved once were.
There is also parallel structure in many pairs of lines throughout the poem, and the shared rhyme further enhances the connection created between the two lines by that shared structure. The couplet rhyme scheme also creates a strong sense of inevitability for the second word in the pair, since the rhyme follows so quickly. Readers know to expect certain sounds in the second line of each couplet, and it is as if the first and the second word cannot help going together.
This sense of inevitability, then, translates to the ideas expressed in the poem more broadly. For example, the couplet of "fancy" and "Nancy" makes it sound as though a man's love is always captured by Nancy; "parted" and "broken-hearted" reinforce the reader's sense that separation cannot help bringing heartbreaking grief.
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“Ae Fond Kiss” Speaker
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"Ae Fond Kiss" takes the form of a traditional Scottish ballad, which is generally adaptable for any singer, of any age or gender. But if the speaker of "Ae Fond Kiss" were imagined to be a specific person, he would be a young man of Scottish origin. Robert Burns was around 31 when he sent "Ae Fond Kiss" to Agnes McLehose, one of whom's nicknames was "Nancy." Burns sent the poem to her just before she departed for Jamaica—a parting that, as the poem says, would seem to be "forever."
In the first stanza, discussing his "tears," "sighs," and "groans," the speaker focuses entirely on his own hopeless future and his "despair" at losing his beloved. The dominant pronoun is "me." In the next stanza, however, this emphasis on his "broken-heart[]" broadens to include his beloved's experience as well as his own. The dominant pronoun is now "we." As he turns his attention to his beloved, the speaker moves from self-absorption to selflessness. He wishes his beloved "joy and treasure, / Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure." While he promises that he can love none "but her," he hopes that she will find joy with a new love. His overriding desire for his beloved's happiness—even though she must find that happiness with someone other than him—reveals that he has a truly selfless love for her. He himself still anticipates no happiness for himself. He then ends the poem as he began it, promising to remember his beloved with tears, sighs, and groans.
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“Ae Fond Kiss” Setting
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There is no specific detail about the setting of the poem. Lyric poems like "Ae Fond Kiss" are often meant to be able to be sung by a variety of singers in a variety of contexts, and this lack of specificity can give the lyric a more universal appeal. But the traces of Scottish dialect—"ae" for "one," "nae" for "no," "sae" for "so," etc.—identify the poem as Scottish, so the reader infers that it is most likely set in Scotland.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Ae Fond Kiss”
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Literary Context
Robert Burns wrote “Ae Fond Kiss” in December 1791. It was around this time that he was asked to write lyrics for a collection of traditional Scottish songs called The Melodies of Scotland—a collection to which he ultimately contributed 100 songs. He similarly provided lyrics, sometimes entirely his own, sometimes adapted from other poets’ work or from traditional ballads (as with "A Red, Red Rose") for George Thomson’s A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice (1799-1818) and James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum (1787-1803). He also collected Scottish folk tunes and set words to them, sometimes even arranging the music as well.
The lyric form clearly influenced Burns’s composition of “Ae Fond Kiss,” as did traditional Scottish dialect. The highly regular structure of the poem—rhyming couplets in three octaves, with all end-stopped lines—means the poem is easily set to music. In fact, when Burns first composed the poem, he imagined it accompanied by music. Burns later published “Ae Fond Kiss” in Scots Musical Museum in 1792 accompanied by the music. Burns’s extensive contributions to such volumes and to the preservation of traditional Scottish songs helped create his fame and establish him as Scotland’s national poet.
“Ae Fond Kiss,” however, was actually inspired partly by an English poem called "The Parting Kiss," published by Robert Dodlsey in The Charmer (1749). The first quatrain of Dodsley’s poem runs:
One kind kiss before we part,
Drop a tear, and bid adieu:
Tho’ we sever, my fond heart,
Till we meet, shall pant for youBurns takes Dodsley’s formal English diction and replaces it with subtle Scottish dialect—“Ae fond kiss” for “One fond kiss,” “Ae fareweel” for “bid adieu.” The term “sever” remains, as does “heart.” Dodlsey’s poem also ends by repeating the first two lines, as Burns’s poem ends by repeating the first four lines. But while Dodsley looks calmly forward to a reunion with his beloved, Burns more tragically laments that they must part “forever.” This permanent separation gives greater emotional intensity to Burns’s poem.
Historical Context
In 1787, Burns’s volume Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect was published in Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland. The volume won Burns a reputation in the city as an accomplished writer, and during his stay in Edinburgh he began many new relationships—including a relationship with Agnes “Nancy” McLehose. Agnes was a married woman but was estranged from her husband. Though their relationship was not known to be a physical one, Agnes and Burns exchanged passionate love letters.
In 1791, however, Agnes decided to sail to Jamaica, where her husband was living, to try to reconcile with him. After he and Agnes met for one final time, Burns sent her a letter, dated December 27, 1791, in which he enclosed the words to “Ae Fond Kiss.” The letter begins, “I have yours, my ever-dearest Nancy, this moment. I have just ten minutes before the Post goes & these I shall employ in sending you some Songs I have just been composing to different tunes for the Collection of Songs, of which you have three volumes—& of which you shall have the fourth.” “Ae Fond Kiss” was eventually published in the fourth volume of James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum in 1792.
Burns’s letter indicates that he was thinking both of his intimate personal relationship with Agnes McLehose and of the more anonymous, more traditional Scottish ballad form. As a biographical account of his relationship with Agnes, the poem is more idealized than strictly factual. Burns married a woman named Jean Armour in 1788 and also had an affair with Agnes’s maid, Jennie Clow. If one reads the poem as the words of Burns himself, the pledges of undying, faithful love might raise some skepticism. But as a more impersonal song, ready to be sung by anyone, it captures a universal emotion in its account of love and loss. Sir Walter Scott, the celebrated Scottish author, wrote of lines 13-16 that this “exquisitely affecting stanza contains the essence of a thousand love tales.” This may be why “Ae Fond Kiss” is the song of Burns that has been recorded most often by contemporary musical artists.
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More “Ae Fond Kiss” Resources
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External Resources
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"Ae Fond Kiss" in Publication — See a digital copy of "Ae Fond Kiss" as published in "Scots Musical Museum," 1792, set to the musical tune "Rory Dall's Port."
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Musical Rendition of "Ae Fond Kiss" — Enjoy a beautifully sung version of "Ae Fond Kiss" by Scottish singer-songwriter Eddi Reader.
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The Background and Music of "Ae Fond Kiss" — Learn more about the relationship that inspired "Ae Fond Kiss" and listen to three musical recordings: a sung version of "Ae Fond Kiss," plus an instrumental version of the poem's original tune, "Rory Dall's Port," and the poem's more common contemporary musical setting, "My Love Today As Heretofore."
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Burns's Letter — See a digital copy of 1791 letter Burns sent to Agnes McLehose containing the words to "Ae Fond Kiss."
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The Robert Burns Birthplace Museum — More information about Burns's relationship with Agnes McLehose, plus pictures of the exhibit at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum dedicated to "Ae Fond Kiss."
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Burns
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