Namangan davlat universiteti ingliz filologiyasi fakulteti amaliy ingliz tili kafedrasi

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 covered with snow; 
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below; 
Farewell to the forests and high-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 wherever I go. 
In 1784 William Burns died. After the father’s death Robert and Gilbert worked hard, but the 
land gave poor crops, and the affairs of the family went from bad to worse. The young poet keenly 
felt the injustice of the world, where the best land, pastures, and woods belonged to the landlords. 
His indignation was expressed in his many verses, which became so dear to the hearts of the 
common people. (“Is There for Honest Poverty”, “John Barleycorn”, “Epistle to Dovie, a Brother 
Poet”, “Lines Written on a Bank-note”). 
Robert was very young, when he understood that poverty could ruin his whole life: he had 
fallen in love with Jean Armour and was going to marry her, but the girl’s father did not want to 
have a poor peasant for his son-in-low. The fact that the young people loved each other did not alter 
his intention to marry Jean to a rich man. Seeing that there was no way for a poor peasant in 
Scotland, Burns decided to sail for Jamaica. To earn money, Robert decided to publish some of his 
poems. The little volume “Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect” was published in 1786. The book 
contained lyrical, humorous and satirical poems written in his earlier years, though some of his 
greatest satires such as “Address to the Unco’ Guid”, “Holy Willie’s Prayer” and “The Jolly 
Beggars” were not included into it. This volume opened for him the doors of fashionable society in 
Edinburgh, for a season, as the untutored ploughman poet, he was a lionized curiosity. The same 
year Robert Burns received an invitation from Edinburgh scholars, who praised his verses. The poet 
accepted the invitation, and went to Edinburgh. A new and enlarged edition of his poems was the 
result. Burns returned to his native village with money enough to buy a farm and marry Jean 
Armour. In 1791 he went bankrupt and was obliged to sell the farm and take a position as customs 
officer in the town of Dumfries. Sometimes Robert Burns is represented by critics as a child of the 
French Revolution. It is true but only partially. His best poems were written before that Revolution. 
He is rightly judged not against the wide expanse of European politics but against the 
sanctimonious hypocrisy of the religious, and against the social barriers that divided man from man. 
This equalitarian philosophy he discovered not in the text-books of political theory, but from his 
own observation, and he expressed it admirably, even recklessly, in one of the greatest of all his 
poems “The Jolly Beggars”.
Hard work destroyed the poet’s health. In 1796 he died in poverty at 37. After his death, his 
widow and children were left without a shilling. But the common Scottish people collected enough 
money to provide the widow with the sustenance for the rest of her life and give all his children an 
education. 
Romanticism, which was the leading literary movement in England for half a century, was 
caused by great social and economic changes. The Industrial Revolution, which had begun in the 
middle of the 18
th
century didn’t bring happiness to the people of Great Britain. During this period 
England changed from an agricultural to an industrial society and from home manufacturing to 
factory production. The peasants, deprived of their lands, had to go to work in factories. Mines and 
factories had changed the appearance of the country. In the cities a large new working class 
developed. But mechanization did not improve the life of the common people. The sufferings of the 
working people led to the first strikes, and workers took to destroying machines. This was a 
movement directed against industrial slavery. Workers, who called themselves Luddites after a 

---

certain Ned Ludd who in fit of fury broke two textile frames, naively believed that machines were 
the chief cause of their sufferings. These actions led to severe repression by the authorities. 
During the early 1800s the French situation dominated England’s foreign policy. The French 
Revolution had begun in 1789 as a protest against royal despotism. In its early phases the French 
Revolution had seemed to offer great hope for common people. At the beginning of the French 
Revolution, most enlightened people in Great Britain had felt sympathy for the democratic ideals of 
the revolutionaries in France. But after achieving power, the revolutionary government in France 
resorted to brutality. Furthermore, in 1793 revolutionary France declared war on England.
Scientific achievements in the areas of geology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy 
flourished during the Romantic Age, but they also did not improve the living conditions of the 
common working people. Now the belief of progressive-minded people in the ideal nature of the 
new system fell to pieces. As a result the Romantic Movement sprang up towards the close of the 
18
th
century.
 

The Romantic Age brought a more daring, individual and imaginative approach to both 
literature and life. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many of the most important 
English writers turned away from the values and ideas characteristic of the Age of Reason. The 
individual, rather than society, was at the center of the Romantic vision. The Romantic writers 
believed in the possibility of progress and social and human reform. As champions of democratic 
ideals, they sharply attacked all forms of tyranny and the spreading evils of individualism, such as 
urban blight, a polluted environment, and the alienation of people from nature and one another.
They all had a deep interest in nature, not as a centre of beautiful scenes but as an informing and 
spiritual influence on life. It was as if frightened by the coming of industrialism and the nightmare 
towns of industry, they were turning to nature for protection. Or as if, with the declining strength of 
traditional religious belief, men were making a religion from the spirituality of their own 
experiences.
They all valued their own experiences to a degree which is difficult to parallel in earlier 
poets. Spencer, Milton and Pope made verse out of legend or knowledge, which was common to 
humanity. The romantic poets looked into themselves, seeking in their own lives for strange 
sensations.