by Despondence » Sat Feb 12, 2005 4:21 pm
Apparently not, since you're not getting any replies. I don't know what that line means, but maybe its character has more to do with his general mood at the time, which was turning somewhat sour by all the scotch "misery" Keats was exposed to, than with Burns himself. While he definitely felt sympathy with Burns, having been forced to cultivate his poetic genius among such uncultivated barbarism, some lines in that poem seems to be indicating that Keats was sliding into one of his fits of despondency and self criticism. I don't know.