SONNET ON AILSA ROCK.* Harken, thou craggy ocean-pyramid, Give answer by thy voice-the sea-fowls' screams! Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams— The last in air, the former in the deep! First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies! MAYBOLE, July 11 [1818]. MY DEAR REYNOLDS, I'll not run over the ground we have passed; that would be nearly as bad as telling a dream—unless, perhaps, I do it in the manner of the Laputan printing press; that is, I put down mountains, rivers, lakes, dells, glens, rocks, with beautiful, enchanting, gothic, picturesque, fine, delightful, enchanting, grand, sublime-a few blisters, &c.-and now you have our journey thus far; where I begin a letter to you because I am approaching Burns's cottage very fast. We have made continual inquiries from the time we left the tomb at Dumfries. His name, of course, is known all about: his great reputation among the plodding people is, "that he wrote a good mony sensible things." One of the pleasant ways of annulling self is approaching such a shrine as the Cottage of Burns: we need not think of his misery -that is all gone, bad luck to it! I shall look upon it hereafter with unmixed pleasure, as I do on my Stratford-on-Avon day with Bailey. I shall fill this sheet for you in the Bardie's country, going no further than this, till I get to the town of Ayr, which will be a nine miles' walk to tea. * In the collected Works. We were talking on different and indifferent things, when, on a sudden, we turned a corner upon the immediate country of Ayr. The sight was as rich as possible. I had no conception that the native place of Burns was so beautiful; the idea I had was more desolate his "Rigs of Barley" seemed always to me but a few strips of green on a cold hill-Oh, prejudice!-It was as rich as Devon. I endeavored to drink in the prospect, that I might spin it out to you, as the silk-worm makes silk from mulberry leaves. I cannot recollect it. Besides all the beauty, there were the mountains of Annan Isle, black and huge over the sea. We came down upon every thing suddenly; there were in our way the "bonny Doon," with the brig that Tam o' Shanter crossed, Kirk Alloway, Burns's Cottage, and then the Brigs of Ayr. First we stood upon the Bridge across the Doon, surrounded by every phantasy of green in tree, meadow, and hill: the stream of the Doon, as a farmer told us, is covered with trees" from head to foot." You know those beautiful heaths, so fresh against the weather of a summer's evening; there was one stretching along behind the trees. I wish I knew always the humor my friends would be in at opening a letter of mine, to suit it them as nearly as possible. I could always find an egg-shell for melancholy, and, as for merriment, a witty humor will turn any thing to account. My head is sometimes in such a whirl in considering the million likings and antipathies of our moments, that I can get into no settled strain in my letters. My wig! Burns and sentimentality coming across you and Frank Floodgate in the office. Oh, Scenery, that thou shouldst be crushed between two puns! As for them, I venture the rascalliest in the Scotch region. I hope Brown does not put them in his journal: if he does, I must sit on the cutty-stool all next winter. We went to Kirk Alloway. "A prophet is no prophet in his own country." We went to the Cottage and took some whisky. I wrote a sonnet for the mere sake of writing some lines under the roof: they are so bad I cannot transcribe them. The man in the cottage was a great bore with his anecdotes. I hate the rascal. His life consists in fuzy, fuzzy, fuzziest. He drinks glasses, five for the quarter, and twelve for the hour; he is a mahogany-faced old jackass who knew Burns: he ought to have been kicked for having spoken to him. He calls himself" a curious old bitch," but he is a flat old dog. I should like to employ Caliph Vathek to kick him. Oh, the flummery of a birth-place! Cant! cant! cant! It is enough to give a spirit the guts-ache. Many a true word, they say, is spoken in jestthis may be because his gab hindered my sublimity: the flat dog made me write a flat sonnet. My dear Reynolds, I cannot write about scenery and visitings. Fancy is indeed less than present palpable reality, but it is greater than remembrance. You would lift your eyes from Homer only to see close before you the real Isle of Tenedos. You would rather read Homer afterwards than remember yourself. One song of Burns's is of more worth to you than all I could think for a whole year in his native country. His misery is a dead weight upon the nimbleness of one's quill; I tried to forget it—to drink toddy without any care-to write a merry sonnet-it won't do-he talked, he drank with blackguards; he was miserable. We can see horribly clear, in the works of such a man, his whole life, as if we were God's spies. What were his addresses to Jean in the after part of his life? [ should not speak so to you-Yet, why not? You are not in the same case-you are in the right path, and you shall not be deceived. I have spoken to you against marriage, but it was general. The prospect in these matters has been to me so blank, that I have not been unwilling to die. I would not now, for I have inducements to live-I must see my little nephews in America, and 1 must see you marry your lovely wife. My sensations are sometimes deadened for weeks together-but, believe me, I have more than once yearned for the time of your happiness to come, as much as I could for myself after the lips of Juliet. From the tenor of my occasional rhodomontade in chit-chat, you might have been deceived concerning me in these points. Upon my soul, I have been getting more and more close to you every day, ever since I knew you, and now one of the first pleasures I look to is your happy marriage-the more, since I have felt the pleasure of loving a sister-in-law. I did not think it possible to become so much attached in so short a time. Things like these, and they are real, have made me resolve to have a care of my health-you must be as careful. The rain has stopped us to-day at the end of a dozen miles, yet we hope to see Loch Lomond the day after to-morrow. [ will piddle out my information, as Rice says, next winter, at any time when a substitute is wanted for Vingt-un. We bear the fatigue very well: twenty miles a day, in general. A cloud came over us in getting up Skiddaw-I hope to be more lucky in Ben Lomond-and more lucky still in Ben Nevis. What I think you would enjoy is, picking about ruins, sometimes Abbey, sometimes Castle. Tell my friends I do all I can for them, that is, drink their health in Toddy. Perhaps I may have some lines, by and by, to send you fresh, on your own letter. Your affectionate friend, JOHN KEATS. Part of the next letter illustrates, with singular felicity, the peculiar action of a high imagination on the ordinary relations of the sexes. The youthful companions of Keats, who saw how gentle and courteous was his manner to women, and who held the common belief that every poet was essentially sentimental, could not comprehend his frequent avoidance of female society, and the apparent absence of any engrossing passion; the pardonable conceit of conscious genius suggested itself to them as the probable cause of this defective sympathy, and, when he manifested an occasional interest in any one person, it was attributed rather to satisfied vanity than to awakened love. But the careful study of the poetical character at once disproves these superficial interpretations, and the simple statement of his own feelings by such a man as Keats is a valuable addition to our knowledge of the most delicate and wonderful of the works of Nature-a Poet's heart. For the time was at hand, when one intense affection was about to absorb his entire being, and to hasten, by its very violence, the calamitous extinction against which it struggled in vain. MY DEAR BAILEY, INVERARY, July 18, [1818.] The only day I have had a chance of seeing you when you were last in London I took every advantage of some devil led you out of the way. Now I have written to Reynolds to tell me where you will be in Cumberland—so that I cannot miss you. And here, Bailey, I will say a few words, written in a sane and sober mind, (a very scarce thing with me,) for they may, hereafter, save you a great deal of trouble about me, which you do not deserve, and for which I ought to be bastinadoed. I carry all matters to an extreme; so that when I have any little vexation, it grows, in five minutes, into a theme for Sophocles. Then, and in that temper, if I write to any friend, I have so little self-possession, that I give him matter for grieving, at the very time, perhaps, when I am laughing at a pun. Your last letter made me blush for the pain I had given you. I know my own disposition so well that I am certain of writing many times hereafter in the same strain to you: now, you know how far to believe in them. You must allow for Imagination. I know I shall not be able to help it. I I am sorry you are grieved at my not continuing my visits to Little Britain. Yet I think I have, as far as a man can do who has books to read and subjects to think upon. For that reason I have been no where else except to Wentworth Place, so nigh at hand. Moreover, I have been too often in a state of health that made it prudent not to hazard the night air. Yet, further, I will confess to you that I cannot enjoy society, small or numerous. am certain that our fair are glad I should come for the mere sake of my coming; but I am certain I bring with me a vexation they are better without. If I can possibly, at any time, feel my temper coming upon me, I refrain even from a promised visit. I am certain I have not a right feeling towards women—at this moment I am striving to be just to them, but I cannot. Is it because they fall so far beneath my boyish imagination? school-boy I thought a fair woman a pure goddess; my mind was a soft nest in which some one of them slept, though she knew it not. I have no right to expect more than their reality. I thought them ethereal, above men. 1 find them perhaps equal-great by When I was a |