‘Thou widowed mother, whose wan breasts are dry’

These two lines and the beginning of a third are written in ink on p. 13 of Nbk 14. They follow a cancelled attempt at a line, ‘England who wert a name that struck w alt. that froze’, a clue perhaps to S.’s intention to develop a contrast between an honourable past and the present degraded state of the country. The original first word of the first line of the text was also ‘England’, which S. evidently cancelled in order to achieve a pentameter. The apostrophe to the nation as a bereaved and extenuated mother incorporates elements common to a number of poems that S. wrote from autumn 1819 to early 1820: MA (no. 231) 139–46, People of England, ye who toil and groan (no. 281) 13–16, To —— (Corpses are cold in the tomb) (no. 292) 1–10. Lines 6–10 of the last-named poem are drafted on page 12 of the nbk facing the present lines, which are likely to have been composed around the same time, from early 1820 to 1 May of that year. The note of bitterness struck in ‘cold heart’ accords with the tone of that poem.