Kind sister! aye, this third name says you are; Sons, daughters and a home like honied hive. if they belonged to the next piece copied into the journal-letter; but the context indicates that the date really belongs to the acrostic. Keats (with his friend Charles Armitage Brown) was on the way to Carlisle, to take coach there for Dumfries and begin the walking tour in Scotland on which the first serious break-down of his health occurred. Leaving London about the middle of June, they had seen the George Keatses off from Liverpool for America, and had then started walking from Lancaster; so that, by the time Keats was writing the acrostic, he had already been walking several days; and four days later the friends reached Carlisle, ending there the English portion of their walk. SONNET. On visiting the Tomb of Burns. 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; Though sapphire-warm, their stars do never beam : All is cold Beauty; pain is never done : 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 For who has mind to relish, Minos-wise, The Real of Beauty, free from that dead hue 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. fresh date, though probably this statement belongs to the day on which Keats was at Newton Stewart. I have before me an unpublished letter to his sister, which will duly appear among the letters, wherein, beginning at Dumfries on the 2nd, he says he shall be at Kirkcudbright the next day; speaks of visiting Burns's tomb "yesterday"; and says he has so many interruptions he cannot fill a letter in one day. Unfortunately these interruptions sometimes occurred in the middle of a paragraph, and one cannot always be sure at what point the date changes. MEG MERRILIES. OLD I. LD MEG she was a Gipsy, And liv'd upon the Moors: Her bed it was the brown heath turf, And her house was out of doors. 2. Her apples were swart blackberries, Her currants pods o' broom; Her wine was dew of the wild white rose, Keats and his companion seem to have started from Dumfries again on the 2nd of July, "through Galloway-all very pleasant and pretty with no fatigue when one is used to it", as he writes to his sister, adding "We are in the midst of Meg Merrilies' country of whom I suppose you have heard", and giving her forthwith a copy of the poem. Lord Houghton says of this stage "The pedestrians passed by Solway Frith through that delightful part of Kirkcudbrightshire, the scene of 'Guy Mannering.' Keats had never read the novel, but was much struck with the character of Meg Merrilies as delineated to him by Brown. He seemed at once to realise the creation of the novelist, and, suddenly stopping in the pathway, at a point where a profusion of honeysuckles, wild rose, and fox-glove, mingled with the bramble and broom that filled up the spaces between the shattered rocks, he cried out, 'Without a shadow of doubt on that spot has old Meg Merrilies often boiled her kettle."" On the 3rd of July he writes to Tom from "Auchtercairn" (meaning, I presume, Auchencairn, some six miles east of Kirkcud 3. Her Brothers were the craggy hills, Her Sisters larchen trees- She liv'd as she did please. 4. No breakfast had she many a morn, And 'stead of supper she would stare But 5. every morn of woodbine fresh And every night the dark glen Yew bright)" We are now in Meg Merrilies' country, and have, this morning, passed through some parts exactly suited to her. Kirkcudbright County is very beautiful, very wild, with craggy hills, somewhat in the Westmoreland fashion. We have come down from Dumfries to the sea-coast part of it. The following song you will have from Dilke, but perhaps you would like it here". I should judge that the scene given by Brown to Lord Houghton belonged rather to the morning of the 3rd than to the evening of the 2nd; and that Keats took out his current letter to his sister at Auchencairn on pausing there to breakfast, and wrote the poem into it when he began a fresh letter to Tom with it. Thus, besides a rough draft, there would be three fair copies of the poem, one for Tom, one for Fanny, and one for Mr. Dilke. The only copy I have seen is that for his sister, from which I have revised the text. It is written in stanzas of four lines,—not eight as hitherto given,—the final stanza having thus two extra lines instead of being unfinished as it appears in previous editions. In this manuscript very few variations of consequence occur. Stanza 4 shows a cancelled read |