ABSTRACT
These three lines are drafted in pencil on f. 3r rev. of Nbk 12 above the draft of Within the surface of the fleeting river (no. 258). Mary transcribed them into Mary Copybk 1 f. 26 but did not publish them. The position of the draft in Nbk 12—the draft of the first three stanzas of Ode to the West Wind (no. 259) begins on the next page but one—has led commentators to conclude that they were set down shortly before the draft of the Ode and that they record an effect of light filtered through the branches of trees in the wooded park of the Cascine on the banks of the Arno outside the Florence city walls where S. was in the habit of walking in autumn 1819. See Rogers (1967) 221–222 and headnote to Within the surface of the fleeting river. This may very well be so, and on this inference A lone wood walk may be dated to mid-October 1819, though the case would be stronger if the lines carried any specifically autumnal reference. It remains possible that the draft dates from as early as early summer 1819 when S. first began to use the nbk (MYRS vi pp. lii–lv). In S.’s verse the mingling of natural phenomena is often invested with erotic significance: see, for example, Love's Philosophy (no. 264).
