ABSTRACT
These lines are drafted in ink at the top of f. 10r in Nbk12 just above the draft of Why would you overlive your life again? (no. 270). Mary transcribed the fragment into Mary Copybk 1 but did not publish it. As Mary Quinn points out (MYRS vi 95), in view of the entries on either side of it, the fragment is likely to have been written some time between summer 1819 and late summer 1820. It is provisionally dated to November–December 1819 here, as the details of the evening scene described seem appropriate to the cold and rainy late autumn of 1819 in Florence. See headnote to One atom of golden cloud, like a fiery star (no. 269). Forman (Huntington Nbks i 130–4) transcribed the lines under the heading ‘Evening in the Euganean Hills’, speculating that they might be ‘a choice little addition to the beautiful series of Turneresque word-paintings in the Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills (no. 183) in the autumn of 1818’ (130). The passage of the earlier poem in question is ll. 206–334. The present lines share its metre but, rather than an addition to it, they seem more likely to be S.’s poetic notation of the actual appearance of the sky on a given evening in autumn 1819.
