ABSTRACT
An untitled fragment isolated amid drafts of PU III iv; the ink draft appears to run over a pencil draft of the closing speech of PU III, which would indicate a date later than March 1819. But the lines in Nbk 6 do not appear to be a first draft, but rather an abandoned reworking of an earlier draft; S. is known to have worked on PU at Este using loose sheets rather than in a nbk, and these lines were perhaps also similarly drafted at first; see headnote to PU. Lines 4-6 establish the locale as Este (see headnote to previous poem). It was probably written soon after Mary S.’s arrival on 5 September and before Clara’s death on 24 September. The tone is lighthearted; there is moonlight; the ‘summer earth’ exhales perfumes. But little can be based on lines so purely fanciful, although they might possibly have influenced PU III iii 142-4: The flowers whose purple and translucid bowls / Stand ever mantling with aerial dew, / The drink of spirits’ (no surviving draft). A comma has been added after bats.
