Keat’s dazzling Ode to Autumn has recently been saluted by more than one contributor to the daily poem feature.
Here is an extract from his light-hearted description to his sister Fanny of his first impressions of Scotland, which he visited in the summer of 1818. The trip yielded much of substance, from sonnets on the theme of Burns, Ailsa Craig, and Staffa, to a dialogue between Ben Nevis and a disgruntled woman tourist.
from A SONG ABOUT MYSELF
There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
He ran away to Scotland
The people for to see –
Then he found
That the ground
Was as hard,
That a yard
Was as long,
That a song
Was as merry,
That a cherry
Was as red,
That lead
Was a 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.
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