object:1.jk - On Visiting The Tomb Of Burns
author class:John Keats
book class:Keats - Poems
subject class:Poetry
class:chapter
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.'
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