ABSTRACT
Included, without title, in a letter to Hogg dated 8 May 1811, and probably contemporary with it. S., alone in London, has been replying to Hogg’s reports from Ellesmere in Shropshire: ‘The scenery excites mournful ideas. I am sorry to hear it. I hoped that it wd. have had a contrary effect.’ (24 April; L i 67). He has argued that although Elizabeth S. was plainly lost to Hogg for the foreseeable future, still ‘ought it not rather to be years, or rather ought years even to decide upon a question so important-’? (c. 25 April; L i 75). Hogg’s eventual inheritance ‘would possibly add to the happiness of some being to whom you cherish some remote hope of approximation, union-the indissoluble sacred union of love Why is it said’, etc.-the poem running on without a break on the same line. S.’s poem may have been suggested by the reunion of Ladurlad with his dead wife Yedillian in the Bower of Bliss in Southey’s Kehama X 10: ‘They sin who tell us Love can die. / With life all other passions fly,’ etc. Hogg’s textual changes or inadvertencies, noted below, defeat the intended sense.
