ABSTRACT
Written on f. 10r of Nbk 10 immediately below the draft of Now the day has died away (no. 268), in the same ink and with the same dull pen-point, this fragment breaks off following l. 3, which is a syllable shorter than each of the two ten-syllable lines that form the opening couplet. Mary transcribed it into Mary Copybk 1 but did not publish it. Its position in the nbk would be consistent with a date of composition within the broad range of summer 1819 to late summer 1820, as Mary Quinn remarks (MYRS vi 95). It is tentatively dated here to November–December 1819, the provisional date assigned to Now the day. As the note to l. 1 indicates, the lines seem to develop from S.’s reading of the soliloquy in Paradise Lost x 720–844 in which Adam muses on the sentence of death that has been imposed on him and his descendants as a consequence of his sin. In some parts of this passage Adam addresses himself directly, suggesting that ll. 1 and 3 below are also framed as self-address. The leading idea and image of the present fragment anticipate TL: see note to l. 3.
