object:1.jk - On Hearing The Bag-Pipe And Seeing The Stranger Played At Inverary
author class:John Keats
book class:Keats - Poems
subject class:Poetry
class:chapter
Of late two dainties were before me plac'd
Sweet, holy, pure, sacred and innocent,
From the ninth sphere to me benignly sent
That Gods might know my own particular taste:
First the soft Bag-pipe mourn'd with zealous haste,
The Stranger next with head on bosom bent
Sigh'd; rueful again the piteous Bag-pipe went,
Again the Stranger sighings fresh did waste.
O Bag-pipe thou didst steal my heart away --
O Stranger thou didst re-assert thy sway --
Again thou Stranger gav'st me fresh alarm --
Alas! I could not choose. Ah! my poor heart
Mum chance art thou with both oblig'd to part.
'It would seem to have been still the 17th of July when Keats and Brown "came round the end of Loch Fyne to Inverary," as the poet tells his brother Tom in continuing the letter begun at Cairndow; for he makes a fresh start with "last evening," and lower down another fresh start dated July 20th in which he speaks of the lapse of two days. The letter to Bailey is also dated "Inverary, July 18;" and that was doubtless the day on which he recounted Tom the arrival at Inverary.
Keats had been excruciated by a solo on the bag-pipe on the way, "I thought," he says, "the brute would never have done -- yet was I doomed to hear another. On entering Inverary we saw a Play Bill -- Brown was knock'd up from the new shoes -- so I went to the Barn alone where I saw the Stranger accompanied by a Bag-pipe. There they went on about 'interesting creaters' and 'human nater' -- till the curtain fell and then came the Bag-pipe. When Mrs. Haller fainted down went the curtain and out came the Bag-pipe -- at the heartrending, shoemending reconciliation the Piper blew amain. I never read or saw this play before; not the Bag-pipe nor the wretched players themselves were little in comparison with it -- thank heaven it has been scoffed at lately almost to a fashion."
The sonnet given above follows this passage without a break; and I presume we may safely assign it to the 18th of July 1818. It has already been published, in The Athenaeum of the 7th of June 1873. Without being in any sense a good sonnet, it is highly interesting as the record of a mood, and of Keats's attitude towards the wretched but once renowned work of August von Kotzebue, translated into English and performed at Drury Lane as long ago as 1798. The part of Mrs. Haller has been graced by no less a player than Mrs. Siddons. The manuscript of the sonnet shows a cancelled reading in line 8, 'sighed in discontent,' rejected of course as upsetting the metre.'
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