ABSTRACT
There is no indication, whether within the poem or elsewhere, of a likely date of composition. The poem is ‘paired’ by title and subject matter with Another Way of Love (except in 18652); for this practice in B. see headnote to Love in a Life (p. 1). The addressee in this poem is called Pauline, a name used by B. for the eponymous addressee of his first published poem. With the sentiments of the poem, cp. the third Canto of Childe Harold, in which the poet remembers ‘one soft breast . . . Which unto his was bound by stronger ties / Than the church links withal’, and sends her some flowers from the Rhine: ‘I send the lilies given to me; / Though long before your hand they touch, / I know that they must wither’d be; / But yet reject them not as such; / For I have cherish’d them as dear, / Because they yet may meet thine eye’ (iii 487-9; 516-21). Cp. also Flower’s Name (II 225).
