ABSTRACT
Headed ‘1809’ above the title in Esd, but probably written between 31 December 1810 and 6 January 1811. The version in Esd, which supplies the title, seems complete although consisting only of stanzas 1,3, and 4. S. sent the poem to Hogg in a letter of 6 January 1811, adding after it: ‘I am very cold this morning, so you must excuse bad writing as I have been most of the night pacing a Church-yard … I must now engage in scenes of strong interest, You see the subject of the foregoing. I send because I think it may amuse [i.e. divert] you-.’ (SC ii 690; text from MS). After receiving Hogg’s (lost) reply, S. wrote on 11 January: ‘The poetry wh I sent you alluded not to [the] subject of my nonsensical ravings.-I hope that you are now publishing Leonora.’ (SC ii 701). Hogg had therefore been expected to recognize the situation implied by the tear and the grave, but did not do so, and S. then dissociated the subject from that of his 153own ‘non-sensical ravings’–presumably those concerning his loss of Harriet Grove. The rest of both letters mainly concerned Hogg’s attempts to arouse Elizabeth S.’s interest. Though there may be some personal bearing in the poem (see especially lines 17–18), it is primarily a lament over the grave of a fair and virtuous but humble and unfortunate girl, and clearly belongs to the group of poems written about ‘Mary’ (see Nos. 38–42, and headnote to No. 38). There are parallels between it and those ‘Mary’ poems in which the girl is already dead, and three days before sending the poem S. had told Hogg: ‘the poor Mary is a character worthy of Heaven. I adore it’ (L i 36). The frost and snow suggest that it was written later than the others in the series (GM lxxxi (January 1811) 2; there was a period of hard frost between 31 December and 11 January, with snow on 1 and 3 January), and stanzas 2 and 5, which import an incongruous radicalism into the sentiment, may have been added for Hogg’s benefit and dropped again when the poem was copied into Esd. S.’s hint about pacing a churchyard may also have been meant to convey the impression that the poem had been composed that very morning. The idea of the poem was probably found in Moore’s 12-line lyric ‘The Tear’ (?1806), in which a girl weeps over her lover’s grave, ending: A warm tear gush’d, the wintry air Congeal’d it as it flow’d away: All night it lay an ice-drop there, At morn it glitter’d in the ray! An angel, wandering from her sphere, Who saw this bright, this frozen gem, To dew-eyed Pity brought the tear, And hung it on her diadem!
