Lochnagar, by Kathleen Jamie – Scotland’s Makar on the passing of Queen Elizabeth II
![Kathleen Jamie](https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/b25lY21zOjI1MDRiNTFiLWU4NDYtNDYyZS1hZTczLTM5MDk4MjIyMzIxMjplMjI5OTVlNi0xN2MyLTQwODAtODM1Yy05MDg5NzA1NTM5ZGY=.jpg?crop=3:2,smart&width=640&quality=65&enable=upscale)
![Kathleen Jamie](/img/placeholder.png)
Of the poem, Jamie said, “A makar’s role is to bring poetry into the heart of our national life. With an extraordinary national event as we are having now, I felt that it was incumbent on me to make a poem for the occasion.”
"I chose to do this in an old-fashioned form to represent the virtues that many people found in the Queen, of constancy and tradition.”
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Hide Ad"The poem speaks to the landscape. In this, I find I can have something in common with the Queen: a love of the Scottish landscape. So, when I was thinking about how to make the poem my imagination went to that part of the Scottish landscape that she loved so well.”
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Lochnagar, by Kathleen Jamie
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The alder boughs hang heavy,
Red weighs the rowan-trees
That line the well-loved path which climbs
To Lochnagar from Dee
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And knows at last the open hill,
Those ancient wind-honed heights
Where deer stand shy and sky-lined,
Then vanish from living sight,
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Where grief is ice, and history
Is distant roiling skies,
Where weather chases weather
Across the lands she strived
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To serve, and served supremely well,
Till the call came from afar:
Back to the country kept in her heart,
the Dee, and Lochnagar.
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