ABSTRACT
The Cloud was published in the ‘Miscellaneous Poems’ section of 1820. No complete holograph MS is known to survive, but there are drafts of ll. 59–66 and 71–2 on p. 21 of Nbk 14, and of ll. 77–84 on p. 31; and there is a very clean and legible fair copy in S.’s hand of ll. 35–84 on pp. 35–7 of the same nbk. A missing leaf immediately preceding p. 35 no doubt carried the fair copy of the first thirty-four lines, as BSM v points out (xxxviii). The Cloud was not transcribed into Harvard Nbk 1, as were seven of the nine poems published with PU in 1820, probably because Nbk 14 already contained a fair copy. In 1839 Mary included The Cloud among the Poems Written in 1820, although in the Preface she indicates that it was composed in England at some earlier date:
the “Ode to the Sky Lark”, and “The Cloud” … were written as his mind prompted, listening to the carolling of the bird, aloft in the azure sky of Italy; or marking the cloud as it sped across the heavens, while he floated in his boat on the Thames. (i p. xi)
