ABSTRACT
Idyllic and gently erotic, this dream-lyric was first published in the Original Poetry section of Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book for 1822 (123–4; LPB) over the signature Σ, a Gk capital sigma. The first four stanzas are drafted on two pages (164–5) of Nbk 11, with a few lines on p. 166, under the title ‘To ——’; the draft of the final stanza is on p. 140 rev. of Nbk 14. S. transcribed a fair copy into Harvard Nbk 1 (84–6) without title or date, though Mary subsequently added the title ‘A Dream’. A later holograph, entitled The Question——, from which the text in LPB was printed, is now in the Morgan Library & Museum (M. A. 3223; hereafter PM); in this MS (a Gk capital delta Δ) has been added in pencil at the end of the poem, the symbol by which S.’s contributions to the LPB for 1819 and 1821 were signed. For the poem to have appeared in the LPB for 1822 the MS must have been sent either to Hunt or to Charles Ollier the publisher around the beginning of November 1821; no accompanying letter from S. is known to survive, however. LPB evidently served as copy-text for 1824 which both omits the sixth line of the second stanza as LPB does and reproduces its peculiar reading in l. 15 (see note below). The missing line was not restored until 1870: see note to l. 14. 1839 groups the poem with those written in 1820; a date of composition early in that year is confirmed by MS and other evidence. The draft in Nbk 11 is preceded and followed by drafts for SP (no. 296)—most of them for Part Third—which was composed in March 1820; so the first four stanzas of The Question were probably in place before SP was drafted around them. The two poems have in common an idealized catalogue of flowers, and on p. 166 of Nbk 11 a few lines of draft for the third stanza of The Question run into draft lines for SP i 41–4: several words and images are shared between these parts of the poems, while ll. 45–6 of SP Part First borrow closely from The Question ll. 26–7 which are drafted on pp. 165–6 of the nbk. The title of the 266draft, ‘To ——’, the absent name anticipating the question of the final line, would indicate that S. at first intended the poem as an address to an individual, perhaps to Sophia Stacey who had left Florence on 29 December and for whom he composed several lyrics in late 1819/early 1820: see headnote to Thou art fair, and few are fairer (no. 271). S.’s postscript to Mary's letter to Sophia of 5 March (L ii 175) promises her two more poems as well as enjoining her not to reveal the author of the one he sends her. The winter setting and the anticipation of spring suggest composition between January and March 1820, a period consistent with Mary's dating of the poem in 1839.
