"Oh, I am very weary, Though tears no longer flow; My eyes are tired of weeping, My heart is sick of woe"
About this Quote
The line-by-line structure does quiet rhetorical work. "My eyes are tired of weeping" shifts sorrow into muscle memory, a repetitive labor that has simply worn out its tools. Then "My heart is sick of woe" gives grief a medical register: not romantic suffering but an illness that lingers, infects, and dulls. The repeated "My" tightens the poem's claustrophobia. This isn't tragedy observed from a distance; it's a self trapped in its own symptoms.
Context matters: Bronte wrote in a culture that prized feminine sensibility but punished female candor. She threads the needle by using the familiar vocabulary of Victorian melancholy while slipping in something more radical: the refusal of catharsis. There's no cleansing tear, no moral uplift, no tidy lesson. For a novelist attuned to the mechanics of coercion and endurance, weariness becomes its own critique. The subtext is survival under pressure: when sorrow stops being expressive and becomes infrastructural, the body doesn't perform grief; it hosts it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sadness |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Bronte, Anne. (2026, January 15). Oh, I am very weary, Though tears no longer flow; My eyes are tired of weeping, My heart is sick of woe. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/oh-i-am-very-weary-though-tears-no-longer-flow-my-166978/
Chicago Style
Bronte, Anne. "Oh, I am very weary, Though tears no longer flow; My eyes are tired of weeping, My heart is sick of woe." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/oh-i-am-very-weary-though-tears-no-longer-flow-my-166978/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Oh, I am very weary, Though tears no longer flow; My eyes are tired of weeping, My heart is sick of woe." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/oh-i-am-very-weary-though-tears-no-longer-flow-my-166978/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.






