Featured Poem: My Heart’s In The Highlands by Robert Burns

At The Reader Organisation's recent Think Day - one of our regular staff get-togethers - we gathered a collection of 'Poems for Places'; lines that make us think of a certain place close to our hearts, bring us into a particularly peaceful state of mind or strike a chord with the work we do, or are about to do. Of course, the case can be made for any poem fitting one of these criteria, if you read it for long enough, and we all have our own poem for our own place.

We got a great stack of selections from our band of Readers, and spent a very enjoyable hour reading through them together. One of the choices was this week's Featured Poem, which has a distinctly Scottish flavour. As we've got something of a mini-home in Scotland, working there since 2011 and developing our projects with older and young people, The Reader Organisation can happily say that we're joining Rabbie and putting a piece of Scotland firmly in our hearts.

My Heart's In The Highlands

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe -
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of valour, the country of worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

Farewell to the mountains high cover'd with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands a chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe -
My heart's in the Highlands, whereever I go.

Robert Burns