‘The vale is like a vast Metropolis’

These two lines are drafted in pencil at the top of Nbk 10 f. 48^r rev. just above a pencil draft (overwritten by an ink fair copy) of Goodnight (no. 277) and a fair copy of the third stanza of An Exhortation, which is written crossways over them. The draft of Goodnight begins in pencil immediately below these lines, which would therefore probably have been in place first. As Goodnight was composed in late December 1819, the present lines were probably written shortly before that date (see below).