ABSTRACT
If the heading ‘1810’ in Esd is reliable, probably inspired if not composed between 16 April and 5 May when Harriet Grove was with S. on a visit to Field Place and to her brother John Grove in London. A spring context fits lines 11–12, 23–4. S.’s relationship with Harriet at this time is accurately shown as ‘passionate Friendship’, and the poem implies an interval of close physical propinquity in the midst of a long separation (‘a waste of years’). The lovers were much too young to think of marriage (S. was 17, Harriet only 15), although Harriet’s brother Charles recalled later that ‘an engagement… had … been permitted, both by his father and mine’ (Hogg ii 551). Stanza 5, if not composed later, must reflect either adolescent despondency or some awareness of parental uncertainty on the Groves’ side. Zastrozzi and WJ, sent earlier to Harriet, had not been well received by her family; her mother had hesitated before accepting the invitation to Field Place; and Harriet seemed perplexed by the warmth of her welcome there (see SC ii 571–8). S. detached stanza 5 and sent it (adapted in order to stress Hogg’s situation in regard to the unresponsive Elizabeth S.) at the foot of ‘Hopes that swell in youthful breasts’ to Hogg on about 11 June 1811 (the accepted date, c. 19 June, is dubious). Hogg printed it continuously with ‘Hopes that swell’, and it has formerly appeared as the last stanza of that poem (see SC ii 814). Lines 1–13 were printed by Rossetti in 1870 as a ‘poem extracted by Mr. Garnett from a MS book’ and dated ‘not later than 911813’ (Rosetti 1870 ii 601). As these lines coincide exactly with one page of Esd, Garnett’s source was probably the former ‘governess in the Esdaile family’ (L about S 87) who also copied for him two birthday sonnets. Only the more significant additions to the pointing have been noted.
