The disappearance of his brother David in discreditable circumstances in 1907 so affected him that he gave up his intention to become a barrister and instead studied theology at the local New College.

Old habits died hard, however, and his first collection of poems, Songs of Night, a work of Swinburnean aestheticism, was published in 1910 at his father's expense - pillar of the presbytery though he was.

Ordained into the United Free Church of Scotland in 1912, Young was appointed two years later to his first ministry in the village of Temple, Midlothian, and married Janet Green, who was lecturing in English at a teacher training college in Glasgow.

Young came to reject his former style upon achieving the honed and focused nature poetry of Winter Harvest (1933) and the four later collections that he called his canon.

"Christmas Day" from his collection Speak to the Earth (1939) also proved popular with composers and was set by Mervyn Roberts (1947), Robin Milford (1949), Neil Butterworth (1954), and Elizabeth Poston (1967).