John Keats

On Visiting The Tomb Of Burns

The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun, The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem, Though beautiful, cold- strange- as in a dream I dreamed long ago, now new begun. The short-liv'd, paly summer is but won From winter's ague for one hour's gleam; Through sapphire warm their stars do never beam: All is cold Beauty; pain is never done. For who has mind to relish, Minos-wise, The real of Beauty, free from that dead hue 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. 'This sonnet, with which the poems of the Scotch tour with Brown begins, was not a very "prosperous opening. " It seems to have been written on the 2nd of July 1818, and was first given by Lord Houghton in the Life, Letters &c. in 1848 as part of a letter to Tom Keats, wherein the poet sufficiently explains the comparative poverty of the production, thus: -- "You will see by this sonnet that I am at Dumfries. We have dined in Scotland. Burns's tomb is in the church-yard corner, not very much to my taste, though on a scale large enough to show they wanted to honour him. Mrs. Burns lives in this place; most likely we shall see her to-morrow. 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. I will endeavour to get rid of my prejudices and tell you fairly about the Scotch. " It is well to say at once that the precise dates assigned to this series of poems are not absolutely certain; for Keats himself was notoriously inexact about dates, and, according to his own confession, "never knew. " Thus the next published letter, containing the Meg Merrilies poem, is dated "Auchtercairn, 3rd July;" and in it we read "yesterday was passed in Kirkcudbright," without any fresh date, though probably this statement belongs to the day on which Keats was at Newton Stewart. ' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.