There are some poems that haunt the heart. In this book, A Gathering, Alexander McCall Smith takes you on a personal journey through the landscape of Scottish poetry, choosing those poems that mean most to him. Some of these are well known, others are less familiar — private gems that he feels should be more widely shared. The poems range from early ballads through Burns to works of twentieth-century figures such as MacDiarmid and Morgan. There are lines here to make the heart soar — just as there are lines that may break it.
Poetry is often a private consolation. We find poems that mean something to us because they express a vision we recognise as true. Lines that give voice to some important truth about the world may remain with us for life, reminding us of the importance of love and sympathy, of joy and insight — of everything that makes us human. A Gathering is a collection of poems that celebrates all these things, as well as Scotland itself, the land and its people, its mountains, its islands, its moments of despair, of loss, of triumph and exhilaration.
The rose of all the world is not for me,
I want for my part
Only the little white rose of Scotland
That smells sharp and sweet – and breaks the heart.
—Hugh MacDiarmid
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