Famous Highland Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Highland poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous highland poems. These examples illustrate what a famous highland poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Burns, Robert
...NAE gentle dames, tho’ e’er sae fair,
Shall ever be my muse’s care:
Their titles a’ arc empty show;
Gie me my Highland lassie, O.
Chorus.—Within the glen sae bushy, O,
Aboon the plain sae rashy, O,
I set me down wi’ right guid will,
To sing my Highland lassie, O.
O were yon hills and vallies mine,
Yon palace and yon gardens fine!
The world then the love should know
I bear my Highland Lassie, O.
But fickle fortune frowns on me,
And I maun cr...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...LONG life, my Lord, an’ health be yours,
Unskaithed by hunger’d Highland boors;
Lord grant me nae duddie, desperate beggar,
Wi’ dirk, claymore, and rusty trigger,
May twin auld Scotland o’ a life
She likes—as butchers like a knife.
Faith you and Applecross were right
To keep the Highland hounds in sight:
I doubt na! they wad bid nae better,
Than let them ance out owre the water,
Then up among thae lakes and seas,
T...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
..., 8 thairm-inspiring sage,
Been there to hear this heavenly band engage,
When thro’ his dear strathspeys they bore with Highland rage;
Or when they struck old Scotia’s melting airs,
The lover’s raptured joys or bleeding cares;
How would his Highland lug been nobler fir’d,
And ev’n his matchless hand with finer touch inspir’d!
No guess could tell what instrument appear’d,
But all the soul of Music’s self was heard;
Harmonious concert rung in every part,
While simple melody pou...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...yie!
Grim Horror girn’d, pale Terror roar’d,
As Murder at his thrapple shor’d,
And Hell mix’d in the brulyie.
As Highland craigs by thunder cleft,
When lightnings fire the stormy lift,
Hurl down with crashing rattle;
As flames among a hundred woods,
As headlong foam from a hundred floods,
Such is the rage of Battle.
The stubborn Tories dare to die;
As soon the rooted oaks would fly
Before th’ approaching fellers:
The Whigs come on like Ocean’s roar,
When all h...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...u’ weel to cleek the sterlin;
For mony a pursie she had hooked,
An’ had in mony a well been douked;
Her love had been a Highland laddie,
But weary fa’ the waefu’ woodie!
Wi’ sighs an’ sobs she thus began
To wail her braw John Highlandman.
AirTune—“O, an ye were dead, Guidman.”A Highland lad my love was born,
The Lalland laws he held in scorn;
But he still was faithfu’ to his clan,
My gallant, braw John Highlandman.
Chorus Sing hey my braw John Highlandman!
Si...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...ing, ranting, raving billie,
Wha for his friend an’ comrade had him,
And in freak had Luath ca’d him,
After some dog in Highland Sang, 2
Was made lang syne,—Lord knows how lang.
He was a gash an’ faithfu’ tyke,
As ever lap a sheugh or dyke.
His honest, sonsie, baws’nt face
Aye gat him friends in ilka place;
His breast was white, his touzie back
Weel clad wi’ coat o’ glossy black;
His gawsie tail, wi’ upward curl,
Hung owre his hurdie’s wi’ a swirl.
Nae doubt but...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...wrangs.
Dempster, 3 a true blue Scot I’se warran’;
Thee, aith-detesting, chaste Kilkerran; 4
An’ that glib-gabbit Highland baron,
The Laird o’ Graham; 5
An’ ane, a chap that’s damn’d aulfarran’,
Dundas his name: 6
Erskine, a spunkie Norland billie; 7
True Campbells, Frederick and Ilay; 8
An’ Livistone, the bauld Sir Willie; 9
An’ mony ithers,
Whom auld Demosthenes or Tully
Might own for brithers.
See sodger Hugh, 10 my watchman stented,
If poets e’er are rep...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...nstrels, just eleven.
For half my life I've loved them well.
And though I have no hope of Heaven,
And more than Highland fear of Hell,
May I be damned if on this shelf
ye find a rhyme I made myself....Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...reige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland
Fling Terrace. He promised he'd get me out of this one,
That mean old cartoonist, but just look what he's
Done to me now! I scarce dare approach me mug's attenuated
Reflection in yon hubcap, so jaundiced, so déconfit
Are its lineaments--fun, no doubt, for some quack phrenologist's
Fern-clogged waiting room, but hardly what you'd call
Companiona...Read more of this...
by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...oot to head;
She turns not chilly
Like weed and lily
In marsh or hilly
High watershed,
Or green soft island
In lakes of highland;
She sleeps awhile, and she is not dead.
For all the hours,
Come sun, come showers,
Are friends of flowers,
And fairies all;
When frost entrapped her,
They came and lapped her
In leaves, and wrapped her
With shroud and pall;
In red leaves wound her,
With dead leaves bound her
Dead brows, and round her
A death-knell rang;
Rang the death-bell for...Read more of this...
by
Campbell, Thomas
...loved so dear!
Yet found he here a home and glad relief,
And plied the beverage from his own fair sheaf,
That fired his Highland blood with mickle glee:
And England sent her men, of men the chief,
Who taught those sires of empire yet to be,
To plant the tree of life,--to plant fair Freedom's tree!
Here was not mingled in the city's pomp
Of life's extremes the grandeur and the gloom
Judgment awoke not here her dismal tromp,
Nor seal'd in blood a fellow-creature's doom,
Nor mo...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...I would I were a careless child,
Still dwelling in my highland cave,
Or roaming through the dusky wild,
Or bounding o'er the dark blue wave;
The cumbrous pomp of Saxon pride
Accords not with the freeborn soul,
Which loves the mountain's craggy side,
And seeks the rocks where billows roll.
Fortune! take back these cultured lands,
Take back this name of splendid sound!
I hate the touch of servile han...Read more of this...
by
Campbell, Thomas
...A chieftain, to the Highlands bound,
Cries, ``Boatman, do not tarry!
And I'll give thee a silver pound
To row us o'er the ferry!''--
``Now, who be ye, would cross Lochgyle,
This dark and stormy weather?''
``O, I'm the chief of Ulva's isle,
And this, Lord Ullin's daughter.--
``And fast before her father's men
Three days we've fled together,
For should he find us ...Read more of this...
by
Rosenberg, Isaac
....
See gargantuan hooked fingers
Pluck in supreme flesh
To smutch supreme littleness.
See the merry limbs in hot Highland fling
Because some wizard vermin
Charmed from the quiet this revel
When our ears were half lulled
By the dark music
Blown from Sleep's trumpet....Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...m suffusions spread,
Which bribes and salaries there have bred;
And from the well of Bute infuse
Three genuine drops of Highland dews,
To purge, like euphrasy and rue,
Thine eyes, for much thou hast to view.
Now freed from Tory darkness, raise
Thy head and spy the coming days.
For lo, before our second-sight,
The Continent ascends in light.
From north to south, what gath'ring swarms
Increase the pride of rebel arms!
Through every State our legions brave
Speed ga...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...vern cheer and tavern joke,—
Sink, O mountain! in the swamp,
Hide in thy skies, O sovereign lap!
Perish like leaves the highland breed!
No sire survive, no son succeed!
Soft! let not the offended muse
Toil's hard hap with scorn accuse.
Many hamlets sought I then,
Many farms of mountain men;—
Found I not a minstrel seed,
But men of bone, and good at need.
Rallying round a parish steeple
Nestle warm the highland people,
Coarse and boisterous, yet mild,
Strong as giant,...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...e seemed to steal, and sought the Nugget Bar,
Wherein there sat a tartaned chiel, as lonely as a star;
A huge and hairy Highlandman as hearty as a breeze,
A glass of whisky in his hand, his bag-pipes on his knees.
"Drink down your doch and doris, Jock," cried Treasurer MacCall;
"The time is ripe to up and pipe; they wait you in the hall.
Gird up your loins and grit your teeth, and here's a pint of hooch
To mind you of your native heath - jist pit it in your pooch....Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...er the expiring horse.
'I little thought, when first thy rein
I slacked upon the banks of Seine,
That Highland eagle e'er should feed
On thy fleet limbs, my matchless steed!
Woe worth the chase, woe worth the day,
That costs thy life, my gallant gray!'
X.
Then through the dell his horn resounds,
From vain pursuit to call the hounds.
Back limped, with slow and crippled pace,
The sulky leaders of the chase;
...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...her little ones;
Alone they heard the drum-roll
And the roar of Sepoy guns.
But to sounds of home and childhood
The Highland ear was true; -
As her mother's cradle-crooning
The mountain pipes she knew.
Like the march of soundless music
Through the vision of the seer,
More of feeling than of hearing,
Of the heart than of the ear,
She knew the droning pibroch,
She knew the Campbell's call:
'Hark! hear ye no MacGregor's,
The grandest o' them all!'
Oh, they listened, du...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...goods in the windows,
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank’d wharves—the huge crossing at the ferries,
The village on the highland, seen from afar at sunset—the river between,
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown, three
miles
off,
The schooner near by, sleepily dropping down the tide—the little boat
slack-tow’d
astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
The strata of color’d clouds, the long bar of ma...Read more of this...
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