{
 "id": "john-keats/lines-written-in-the-highlands-after-a-visit-to-burnss-country",
 "title": "Lines Written in the Highlands After a Visit to Burns’s Country",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "John Keats",
 "poet_slug": "john-keats",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats",
 "book_slug": "life-letters-and-literary-remains",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1848,
  "venue": "Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats (1848)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/lifelettersliter00keat",
   "https://archive.org/details/lifelettersliter02keat"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/john-keats_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://archive.org/details/completepoetical01keat",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005261190"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 48,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 70,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "There is a charm in footing slow across a silent plain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where patriot battle has been fought, where glory had the gain;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There is a pleasure on the heath where Druids old have been,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where mantles gray have rustled by and swept the nettles green;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There is Joy in every spot made known by times of old,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "New to the feet, although each tale a hundred times be told;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There is a deeper Joy than all, more solemn in the heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More parching to the tongue than all, of more divine a smart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When weary steps forget themselves upon a pleasant turf,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon hot sand, or flinty road, or sea-shore iron scurf,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Toward the Castle or the Cot, where long ago was born",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One who was great through mortal days, and died of fame unshorn.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Light heather-bells may tremble then, but they are far away;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wood-lark may sing from sandy fern,⁠—the Sun may hear his Lay;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Runnels may kiss the grass on shelves and shallows clear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But their low voices are not heard, though come on travels drear;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blood-red the sun may set behind black mountain peaks;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blue tides may sluice and drench their time in Caves and weedy creeks;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Eagles may seem to sleep wing-wide upon the Air;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ring-doves may fly convuls’d across to some high-cedar’d lair;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the forgotten eye is still fast lidded to the ground,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As Palmer’s, that with weariness, mid-desert shrine hath found.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "At such a time the soul’s a child, in childhood is the brain;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Forgotten is the worldly heart⁠—alone, it heats in vain.⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Aye, if a Madman could have leave to pass a healthful day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To tell his forehead’s swoon and faint when first began decay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He might make tremble many a one whose spirit had gone forth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To find a Bard’s low cradle-place about the silent North.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Scanty the hour and few the steps beyond the bourn of Care,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond the sweet and bitter world,⁠—beyond it unaware!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Scanty the hour and few the steps, because a longer stay",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would bar return, and make a man forget his mortal way:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O horrible! to lose the sight of well remember’d face,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of Brother’s eyes, of Sister’s brow⁠—constant to every place;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Filling the Air, as on we move, with Portraiture intense;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More warm than those heroic tints that pain a Painter’s sense,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When shapes of old come striding by, and visages of old,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Locks shining black, hair scanty gray, and passions manifold.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No, no, that horror cannot be, for at the cable’s length",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Man feels the gentle anchor pull and gladdens in its strength:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One hour, half-idiot, he stands by mossy water-fall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But in the very next he reads his soul’s Memorial:⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He reads it on the mountain’s height, where chance he may sit down",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon rough marble diadem⁠—that hill’s eternal Crown.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet be his Anchor e’er so fast, room is there for a prayer",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That man may never lose his Mind on Mountains black and bare;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That he may stray league after league some great birthplace to find",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And keep his vision clear from speck, his inward sight unblind.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}