That a yard Was as long, That a song Was as merry, That a cherry Was as red That lead Was as weighty, That fourscore Was as eighty, That a door Was as wooden As in England— So he stood in his shoes And he wonder'd, He wonder'd, He stood in his shoes And he wonder'd. SONNET. TO AILSA ROCK. HEARKEN, thou craggy ocean pyramid ! Give answer from 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? Or when grey clouds are thy cold coverlid. From Kirkcudbright the tourists 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 66 '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, The last in air, the former in the deep; First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies— Drown'd wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep, Another cannot wake thy giant size. 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, from which I give the text, and the title—with the preposition to, not on as in other editions. SONNET. Written in the Cottage where Burns was born. THIS mortal body of a thousand days Now fills, O Burns, a space in thine own room, Where thou didst dream alone on budded bays, Happy and thoughtless of thy day of doom! My pulse is warm with thine own Barley-bree, My head is light with pledging a great soul, My eyes are wandering, and I cannot see, Fancy is dead and drunken at its goal; Yet can I stamp my foot upon thy floor, Yet can I ope thy window-sash to find We In giving this sonnet in the Life, Letters &c. next to that on Visiting the Tomb of Burns, Lord Houghton recorded that it was written "in the whisky-shop into which the cottage where Burns was born was converted". The date however is not the same as that of the other, as the travellers made the détour to the coast and across to Ireland already described, before coming to Burns's birthplace. The following extract from a letter to Haydon accompanies the sonnet in the Life :-"The 'bonnie Doon' is the sweetest river I ever saw-overhung with fine trees as far as we could see. stood some time on the 'brig' o'er which Tam o' Shanter fled-we took a pinch of snuff on the key stone-then we proceeded to the auld Kirk of Alloway. Then we went to the cottage in which Burns was born; there was a board to that effect by the door's side; it had the same effect as the same sort of memorial at Stratford-uponAvon. We drank some toddy to Burns's memory with an old man who knew him. There was something good in his description of Burns's melancholy the last time he saw him. I was determined VOL. II. X The meadow thou hast tramped o'er and o'er, Yet can I think of thee till thought is blind,— Yet can I gulp a bumper to thy name,— O smile among the shades, for this is fame! to write a sonnet in the cottage: I did, but it was so bad I cannot venture it here." On the 11th of July, at Maybole, Keats began a letter to Reynolds, the whole of which is very interesting (see Letters); but the following passage is, in this connexion, peculiarly so : "I begin a letter to you because I am approaching Burns's cottage very fast. We have made continual enquiries from the time we left his 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 pleasantest 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." Probably the proceedings related to Haydon took place on the 12th the travellers must have passed no great way from Burns's cottage on the road to Ayr, seeing that the cottage is some two miles south of the town; but they may have wished to start with renewed vigour after a night's rest on this quasi-religious part of their pilgrimage. To Reynolds also Keats spoke disparagingly of the sonnet, as too bad for transcription; and to Bailey he wrote that it was so wretched" that he destroyed it. Nevertheless it fortunately survived; and I heartily concur in the opinion of the late Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who observes in a letter to me that this sonnet," for all Keats says of it himself, is a fine thing." Lord Houghton comments thus-"The 'local colour' is strong in it: it might have been written where 'Willie brewed a peck o' maut,' and its geniality would have delighted the object of its admiration ". 66 |