ABSTRACT
S. may well have drafted this fragment in Nbk 10 f. 22r rev. during the wet weeks of the latter half of November 1819: a letter of 27–30 November from Mary to Maria Gisborne remarks that he ‘Calderonized on the late weather—he called it an epic of rain with an episode of frost & a few similes—concerning fine weather’ (Mary L i 116). It could of course have been written earlier in the period between late summer and the end of October: see headnote to The gentleness of rain is in the wind (no. 229) and S.’s note to Ode to the West Wind (no. 259). The drafts near to the fragment in the reverse direction of Nbk 10 can be assigned to the period late summer—late autumn 1819. The fragment is one of a number of pieces composed by S. from then to Spring 1820 which record his responses to atmospheric conditions, e.g. Ode to the West Wind, One atom of golden cloud, like a fiery star (no. 269), Ode to Heaven (no. 251), and The Cloud (no. 319). Mary transcribed the lines, omitting the cancelled fragment of l. 5, into Mary Copybk 2 (75) and published them without title or date in the fragments section of 1840 (320). The differences between her transcription and the 1840 text are recorded in the notes.
