John Keats

To Ailsa Rock

Hearken, thou craggy ocean pyramid! Give answer by thy voice, the sea-fowls' screams! When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams? When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead 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 grey 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 eagle-skies-- Drowned wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep, Another cannot wake thy giant-size! 'From Kirkcudbright [Keats and Brown] went to Newton Stewart and thence through Wigtonshire to Port Patrick, visiting Glenluce and Stranraer on the way. From Port Patrick they crossed in the mail packet to Ireland, reaching Donaghadee on the 5th of July. They walked from Donaghadee to Belfast and back, having abandoned the idea of seeing the Giant's Causeway on account of the expense,-- crossed again so as to sleep at Port Patrick on the 8th, and then resumed their Scotch walk. Lord Houghton says,-- "Returning from Ireland, the travellers proceeded northwards by the coast, Ailsa Rock constantly in their view. That fine object first appeared to them, in the full sunlight, like a transparent tortoise asleep upon the calm water, then, as they advanced, displaying its lofty shoulders, and, as they still went on, losing its distinctness in the mountains of Arran and the extent of Cantire that rose behind. " His Lordship records that the sonnet to Ailsa Rock was written in the inn at Girvan; and, as Keats was at Maybole on the 11th, and Girvan is more than three quarters of the way from Port Patrick to Maybole, the sonnet should be dated the 10th or 11th of July 1818. It appeared in Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket-book for 1819. ' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.