Explore "Lines Written in the Highlands after a Visit to Burns's Country" by John Keats on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There is a charm in footing slow across a silent plain, / Where patriot battle has been fought, where glory had the gain; / There is a pleasure on the heath where Druids old have been, / Where mantles gray have rustled by and swept the nettles green; / There is Joy in every spot made known by times of old, / New to the feet, although each tale a hundred times be told; / There is a deeper Joy than all, more solemn in the heart, / More parching to the tongue than all, of more divine a smart, / When weary steps forget themselves upon a pleasant turf, / Upon hot sand, or flinty road, or sea-shore iron scurf, / Toward the Castle or the Cot, where long ago was born / One who was great through mortal days, and died of fame unshorn.
Light heather-bells may tremble then, but they are far away; / Wood-lark may sing from sandy fern, -- the Sun may hear his Lay; / Runnels may kiss the grass on shelves and shallows clear, / But their low voices are not heard, though come on travels drear; / Blood-red the sun may set behind black mountain peaks; / Blue tides may sluice and drench their time in Caves and weedy creeks; / Eagles may seem to sleep wing-wide upon the Air; / Ring-doves may fly convuls'd across to some high-cedar'd lair; / But the forgotten eye is still fast lidded to the ground, / As Palmer's, that with weariness, mid-desert shrine hath found.