John Keats

Sonnet. Written Upon The Top Of Ben Nevis

Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist! I look into the chasms, and a shroud Vapourous doth hide them, -- just so much I wist Mankind do know of hell; I look o'erhead, And there is sullen mist, -- even so much Mankind can tell of heaven; mist is spread Before the earth, beneath me, -- even such, Even so vague is man's sight of himself! Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet,-- Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf, I tread on them, -- that all my eye doth meet Is mist and crag, not only on this height, But in the world of thought and mental might! 'At Oban, apparently on the 26th of July, the decision was taken by Keats and Brown to rest in their travels "a day or two" before pushing on to Fort William and Inverness. I find no precise record of the date of the ascent of Ben Nevis; but it was probably about the 1st of August 1818. Lord Houghton says in the Life, Letters &c. , where this sonnet first appeared, -- "From Fort William Keats mounted Ben Nevis. When on the summit a cloud enveloped him, and sitting on the stones, as it slowly wafted away, showing a tremendous precipice into the valley below, he wrote these lines. " The late Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote to me of this sonnet as "perhaps the most thoughtful of Keats, and greatly superior in execution to the draft on the Ailsa Crag. " It was certainly by no means an unworthy finish to the tour, though I must confess to finding a little wand of spontaneity -- not to be wondered at when we consider that Keats, though writing so bravely to his friends, had undertaken a task far beyond his physical strength, and probably one which laid the foundations of his mortal illness. He speaks to Tom lightly enough of "a slight sore throat;" but in a letter which Brown wrote from Inverness on the 7th of August, he says, "Mr. Keats will leave me, and I am full of sorrow about it;. . . . a violent cold and an ulcerated throat make it a matter of prudence that he should go to London in the Packet: he has been unwell for some time, and the Physician here is of opinion he will not recover if he journeys on foot thro' all weathers and under so many privations. " So Brown went on to walk another 1200 miles alone, and Keats having accomplished 600 and odd, "went on board the smack from Cromarty," as he says in a hitherto unpublished letter to his sister dated "Hampstead, August 18th" and "after a nine days passage . . . landed at London Bridge" on the 17th of August 1818. ' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.