Skip to content
QuillOak

Lyric Poem · Love

Farewell to the Highlands

by Robert Burns

1FAREWELL to the Highlands, farewell to the North,

2The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;

3Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,

4The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

5Chorus.—My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

6My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;

7Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,

8My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.

9Farewell to the mountains, high-cover’d with snow,

10Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;

11Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,

12Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

13 My heart’s in the Highlands, &c.

Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.

Quick facts

Poem
Farewell to the Highlands
Poet
Robert Burns
Length
13 lines
Form
Lyric Poem
Themes
Love, Nature, Winter

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape
13 lines · 3 stanzas of 4–5 lines
Line length
Mostly 11-syllable lines.
The poem’s silhouette — approximate syllables per line, measured from the text above. Even bars mean a measured line; ragged bars mean the poem sets its own widths.

Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake

Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record
Robert Burns1759–1796
Source record
PoetryDBFarewell to the Highlands by robert-burns, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision
Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record
Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint
SHA-256 8c67e80d9e92212d
Editorial handling
Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
Jurisdiction-specific, never a worldwide claimRights policyReport a text or rights issue

More poems like this

More love poems