ABSTRACT
Date of composition. Composition of this short poem was in mid-Aug. 1902. In his account of a visit to WBY at Coole Park, the University of Pennsylvania academic and critic Cornelius Weygandt recalled the poet reciting ‘the refrain of a song, such as ‘All that's beautiful drifts away | Like the waters,’ that he had made the day before and could no more get out of his head than had it been an old tune’ (Lippincott's Magazine Apr. 1904, Mikhail vol. 1, 17). The visit had been arranged by WBY in a letter of 9 July 1902, and J. Kelly dates it to c. 15 Aug. (Kelly, 82). By 18 Nov. WBY's agent, A.P. Watt, was able to offer the poem to The Pall Mall Magazine (CL 4, 997).
