ABSTRACT
A version of lines 1–96 appeared in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), repr. in Poems (1849). There were eight unnumbered sections, and the long line of the completed text was broken into alternating long and short lines, so that the first two lines (for example) read: Said Abner, “At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,— Kiss my cheek, wish me well!” Then I wished it, And did kiss his cheek: There were 190 lines in 1845; 1849 added two lines (now the single line 10); both 1845 and 1849 broke off at what is now line 96 with the note ‘End of Part the First’. The completed version, which does not divide the poem into parts but numbers the sections, was first publ. in M & W, 10 Nov. 1855; repr. 1863 (when it was placed in ‘Lyrics’: see Appendix D, p. 747), 18632, 1868, 1872, 1888. Our text is 1855. The 1845 text is repr. in our ed., II 286–92, with the 1849 variants; only variants from texts subsequent to 1855 are rec. here. As with CE & ED (p. 35) there is a considerable amount of variation in the ‘divine’ pronoun (He / he, Him /him etc.) and divine works or attributes (‘creation’, ‘wisdom’, etc.).
