ABSTRACT
Published in 1824 without date but included among the Poems Written in 1821 in 1839. S.’s holograph fair copy in Harvard Nbk 1 81–3 is the only recorded MS. It evidently served as Mary's text for 1824 where the only difference of substance— ‘thou’ for the holograph's that in line 11—may be accounted for as either a mistranscription or Mary's alteration. Below the Harvard holograph Mary has inscribed ‘Pisa—May—1820’; it is not clear why she re-dated the poem to 1821 in 1839. In the absence of a holograph draft, which might help resolve the discrepancy, the position of S.’s fair copy in Harvard Nbk 1 provides the only additional piece of MS evidence for dating the Song. It is closely preceded in the nbk by fair copies of A Vision of the Sea (no. 321), An Exhortation (no. 283) and Ode to Heaven (no. 251), all of them written between late 1819 and spring 1820— so presumably copied into the nbk before being sent to England for publication in 1820—and followed after some 20 pages by To a Sky-Lark (no. 330), also published in 1820 and very probably posted to England on 12 July 1820. The disposition of these titles in the nbk is consistent with Mary's dating of the Song to May 1820 which appears a more likely time of composition than 1821.
