A Verse Composed and Repeated by Burns
written in 1787
A Verse Composed and Repeated by Burns - context Summary
Written in 1787
Composed in 1787, this brief lyric by Robert Burns frames death as a crossing and names belonging as the desired afterlife. The speaker asks for nothing doctrinal — only just a Highland welcome
— turning personal salvation into a communal, regional welcome. Its single four-line stanza offers plain language and a consolatory tone, reflecting Burns’s engagement with Scottish identity and rural sociability. Read in the context of late-eighteenth-century Scottish verse, the poem privileges cultural belonging over theological specifics as a source of comfort at life’s end.
When death's dark stream I ferry o'er, A time that surely shall come; In Heaven itself, I'll ask no more, Than just a Highland welcome.
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