Home-Thoughts, from the Sea

First publ. B & P vii (DR & L), 6 Nov. 1845, as the last of three untitled sections with the collective title Home-Thoughts, from Abroad. This title was later exclusively used for the first section (see p. 283); the second section consisted of Here’s to Nelson’s memory, later incl. in Nationality in Drinks (see p. 248). Repr., with the title Home-Thoughts, from the Sea, in 1849, 1863 (when it was placed in Lyrics: see Appendix A, p. 464), 1865², 1868, 1888. Our text is 1845. The date of composition is uncertain. DeVane (Handbook 163–5) ascribes both it and Here’s to Nelson’s memory to B.’s sea trip to Italy in Aug. 1844. The copy of Bartoli’s De’ Simboli Trasportan al Morale in which B. is known to have drafted How They Brought the Good News during the 1844 voyage (see headnote, p. 239) also contains an erased draft of Home-Thoughts, from the Sea; however, the first four lines, according to Griffin and Minchin, ‘are an exact transcript of the scene which [B.] beheld from the deck of the Norham Castle on the evening of Friday, 27 April, 1838’ (p. 127), i.e. during B.’s first trip to Italy. Mrs Orr dates the poem to 1838, quoting B.’s sister Sarianna, who told her that ‘the Captain supported [B.] on to the deck as they passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, that he might not lose the sight’ (Orr Life 94). DeVane argues that, had the poems been written in 1838, B. would have included them in B & P iii (DL) in 1842, for which he was short of copy. But since he made up this deficiency with Pied Piper, which is nearly 300 lines long, he clearly needed more material than these poems would have supplied. Furthermore, if the poems were written on the 1844 voyage, they would have been available for publication in Hood’s Magazine in the spring of 1845; and DeVane’s explanation that they were not used because of B.’s low opinion of them would equally explain their earlier exclusion from DL. However, DeVane is on surer ground in pointing to the phrase ‘the second time’ in l. 2 of Here’s to Nelson’s memory as evidence for the 1844 date, at any rate for that poem. B. also told Fanny Haworth that he had written nothing except a few lines for Sordello on the 1838 trip (see headnote, I 351). It is possible that Home-Thoughts, from the Sea was written in 1838 and Here’s to Nelson’s memory in 1844, but on balance we agree with DeVane in dating them both to 1844.