ABSTRACT

Dated ‘April, 1810’ in V&C; written on or immediately after 16–18 April when Harriet Grove was staying at Field Place, and connected with the poem following. Charles Grove recollected in 1857 (Hogg ii 550–1): ‘Bysshe was at that time more attached to my sister Harriet than I can express, and I recollect well the moonlight walks we four had at Strode, and also at St. Irving’s… (St. Irving’s Hills, a beautiful place, on the right hand side as you go from Horsham to Field Place, laid out by the famous Capability Brown, and full of magnificent forest-trees, waterfalls, and rustic seats)… Bysshe was full of life and spirits, and very well pleased with his successful devotion to my sister’ (the gloss in brackets was perhaps added by Hellen S.). Harriet G.’s diary for 17 April reads: ‘… Walked to Horsham saw the Old House St Irvyne had a long conversation but more perplexed than ever walked in the evening to Strood by moonlight’ (SC ii 575). Harriet’s perplexity may have been because it was probably her own father, not the Shelleys, who distrusted her intimacy with S. The poem is in the anapaestic measure of some of Cowper’s best-known lyrïcs, e.g. ‘The Poplar Field’, ‘Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk’, and ‘Catharina’ I and II.