Keats saw his brother George and wife set sail from Liverpool at the end of June, 1818, and then set forth with his friend Charles Armitage Brown on a walking tour through Wordsworth's country and into Scotland. The verses included in this section were all sent in letters, chiefly to his brother Tom. He did not include any in the volume which he published in 1820, and they first saw the light when Lord Houghton included them in the Life, Letters and Literary Remains. The more off-hand and familiar verses written at this time are given in the Appendix. I ON VISITING THE TOMB OF BURNS Written at Dumfries on the evening of July 1, 1818. 'Burns's tomb,' writes Keats, 'is in the Churchyard corner, not very much to my taste, though on a scale large enough to show they wanted to honour him. This Sonnet I have written in a strange mood, half asleep. I know not how it is, the Clouds, the Sky, the Houses, all seem anti-Grecian and anti-Charlemagnish.' THE Town, the churchyard, and the setting sun, The Clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem, Though beautiful, cold in a dream, strange as VERSES WRITTEN DURING A TOUR IN SCOTLAND All is cold Beauty; pain is never done: Sickly imagination and sick pride Cast wan upon it! Burns! with honour due I oft have honour'd thee. Great shadow, hide Thy face; I sin against thy native skies. II TO AILSA ROCK The tourists crossed to Ireland for a short trip, and after returning to Scotland, made their way into Ayrshire, entering it a little beyond Cairn. Their walk led them into a long wooded glen. 'At the end,' writes Keats, July 10, 1818, 'we had a gradual ascent and got among the tops of the mountains whence in a little time I descried in the Sea Ailsa Rock, 940 feet high it was 15 Miles distant and seemed close upon us. The effect of Ailsa with the peculiar perspective of the Sea in connection with the ground we stood on, and the misty rain then falling gave me a complete Idea of a deluge. Ailsa struck me very suddenly really I was a little alarmed.' HEARKEN, thou craggy ocean pyramid ! Give answer from thy voice, the seafowls' screams! When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams? When, from the sun, was thy broad fore head hid ? How long is 't since the mighty power bid Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams? Sleep in the lap of thunder or sunbeams, Or when gray clouds are thy cold coverlid. Thou answer'st not; for thou art dead asleep; Thy life is but two dead eternities — The last in air, the former in the deep; First with the whales, last with the eagleskies 121 Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep, Another cannot wake thy giant size. III WRITTEN IN THE COTTAGE WHERE BURNS WAS BORN From Kingswell's, July 13, 1818, Keats wrote of his experience in visiting Burns's birthplace: The approach to it [Ayr] is extremely fine quite outwent my expectations — richly meadowed, wooded, heathed and rivuleted with a grand Sea view terminated by the black Mountains of the isle of Annan. As soon as I saw them so nearby I said to myself, "How is it they did not beckon Burns to some grand attempt at Epic ?" The bonny Doon is the sweetest river I ever saw - overhung with fine trees as far as we could see We stood some time on the Brig across it, over which Tam o' Shanter filed - we took a pinch of snuff on the Keystone - then we proceeded to the "auld Kirk Alloway." As we were looking at it a Farmer pointed the spots where Mungo's Mither hang'd hersel' and "drunken Charlie brake 's neck's bane." Then we proceeded to the Cottage he was born inthere was a board to that effect by the door side-it had the same effect as the same sort of memorial at Stratford on Avon. We drank some Toddy to Burns's memory with an old Man who knew Burns — damn him and damn his anecdotes - he was a great bore it was impossible for a Southron to understand above 5 words in a hundred. - There was something good in his description of Burns's melancholy the last time he saw him. I was determined to write a sonnet in the Cottage I did but it was so bad I cannot venture it here.' He wrote in the same strain to Reynolds, saying, 'I wrote a sonnet for the mere sake of writing some lines under the Roof they are so bad I cannot transcribe them. The verses which follow were first printed in Life, Letters and Literary Remains. They occur in a letter to Tom Keats from Oban, July 26, 1818, and were preceded by this description: 'I am puzzled how to give you an Idea of Staffa. It can only be represented by a first-rate drawing. One may compare the surface of the Island to a roof-this roof is supported by grand pillars of basalt standing together as thick as honeycombs. The finest thing is Fingal's cave - it is entirely a hollowing out of Basalt Pillars. Suppose now the Giants who rebelled against Jove had taken a whole Mass of black Columns and bound them together like bunches of matches - and then with immense axes had made a cavern in the body of these columns- Of course the roof and floor must be composed of the broken ends of the Columns - such is Fingal's cave, except that the Sea has done the work of excavations, and is continually dashing there so that we walk along the sides of the cave on the pillars which are left as if for convenient stairs. The roof is arched somewhat gothic-wise, and the length of some of the entire side-pillars is fifty feet. About the island you might seat an army of men each on a pillar. The length of the Cave is 120 feet, and from its extremity the view into the sea, through the large arch at the entrance the colour of the column is a sort of black with a lurking gloom of purple therein. For solemnity and grandeur it far surpasses the finest Cathedral. At the extremity of the Cave there is a small perforation into another Cave, at which the waters meeting and buffeting each other there is sometimes produced a report as of a cannon heard as far as Iona, which must be 12 miles. As we approached in the boat, there was such a fine swell of the sea that the pillars appeared rising immediately out of the crystal. But it is impossible to describe it.' NOT Aladdin magian |