‘Be Still My Beating Heart’, Meaning & Context

Meaning of ‘be still my beating heart’

The saying ‘be still my beating heart’, at its most basic, is an expression of excitement when seeing the object of one’s romantic affections – the heart is racing and one can almost hear it beating. Including the word “beating” makes it melodramatic, and humorous. It is most used today to express a breathless response to something exciting on the romantic front, as “be still my heart.”

Origin of ‘be still my beating heart’

The phrase “beating heart” was used as early as 1697 by John Dryden  in The works of Virgil:

“When from the Goal they start, The Youthful Charioteers with beating Heart, Rush to the Race.”

‘My beating heart’ was a stock expression for 18th century novelists and poets. It is first recorded in Nicholas Rowe’s Tamerlane, a tragedy, 1702:

“My beating Heart Bounds with exulting motion.”

The earliest instance of the full ‘be still, my beating heart’ appears in William Mountfort’s Zelmane, 1705:

“Ha! hold my brain; be still my beating Heart.”

The expression, ‘my beating heart,’ with its now comic tone, was brought to a wide public in Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera HMS Pinafore, 1878:

Ralph: Aye, even though Jove’s armoury were launched at the head of the audacious mortal whose lips, unhallowed by relationship, dared to breathe that precious word, yet would I breathe it once, and then perchance be silent evermore. Josephine, in one brief breath I will concentrate the hopes, the doubts, the anxious fears of six weary months. Josephine, I am a British sailor, and I love you!

Josephine: Sir, this audacity!
(Aside.) Oh, my heart, my beating heart!
(Aloud.) This unwarrantable presumption on the part of a common sailor!’

Classic idiom: “Be still my beating heart”

‘My beating heart’ in culture

Victorian poet, Mary Elisabeth Coleridge’s poem,  All One.

Be still, my beating heart, be still
There is no hope for thee to-night.
The fading of the wintry light
Has made a blackness of the hill.
Be still, be still, my beating heart!
For thee to-night there is no fear.
The moon has risen white and clear,
And we shall neither meet nor part.

In Edgar Allen Poe’s poem The Raven:

‘And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more.” ’

In his album Nothing like the Sun, British singer/songwriter, Sting has a track called Be still my beating heart. It begins like this:

‘Be still my beating heart
It would be better to be cool
It’s not time to be open just yet
A lesson once learned is so hard to forget’

Be Still My Beating Heart by Benjamin Darling is a coffee table book, a celebration of womens’ breasts in paintings, photos, sculpture, prints.

Be Still! My Beating Heart is a novel by Joshua Lamar:  A phantom, Edmond Dantes frequents the mysterious Dr. Lamentèrouge to answer the lingering and smoldering questions he has but never asks.

Your Still Beating Heart by Tyler Keevil is a thriller which places moral dilemmas at the heart of a very human story.

A Ruth Paxton short film – Be Still My Beating Heart

Poem by Patricia Robson:

Be still, my beating heart
Much life still, left to live
Be still, my beating heart
Much love left, still to give
Be still, my beating heart
Some grief may come your way
Be still, my beating heart
Some pain may come to stay
Be still, my beating heart
Don’t hold onto any sorrow
Be still, my beating heart
Do look forward to tomorrow
Be still, my beating heart
Hold onto laughter that fills a day
Be still, my beating heart
Say the words still left to say
Be still, my beating heart
After every night a new day
Be still, my beating heart
After every mistake a new way
Be still, my beating heart
Do not ache or so lament
Be still, my beating heart
Be at peace, just this moment

Going back, really far, we find this in Homer’s Odyssey:

“Be still, my heart; thou hast known worse than this. On that day when the cyclops, unrestrained in fury, devoured the mighty men of my company; but still thou didst endure till thy craft found a way for thee forth from out the cave, where thou thoughtest to die.”

Exclamations people frequently use to express the same as “be still my beating heart.”

• Oh my gosh

• My god

• Oh dear

• OMG

• Oh my goodness

• Oh my

• I’m so excited

• Oh Jesus

• My heart just skipped a beat