On Visiting the Tomb of Burns
On Visiting the Tomb of Burns - meaning Summary
Admiration Shaded by Melancholy
Keats records his visit to Robert Burns’s tomb and uses the scene to explore how beauty and memory can feel distanced and pallid. The Scottish landscape and churchyard awaken a dreamlike melancholy: beauty appears cold, drained by imagination and pride. He expresses deep admiration for Burns while admitting a sense of unworthiness or guilt before the poet’s legacy, conflating personal feeling with reflections on mortality and poetic fame.
Read Complete AnalysesThe 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.
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