ABSTRACT
It is possible to establish only the date on which this poem was written down; according to WBY, it had been ‘made long ago’ when he wrote it into his Journal on 9 Mar. 1909. This should not be doubted, but since there is no evidence of any kind for when the quatrain first took shape in the poet's mind, it is included in the chronological order of the present edition at the point of its inscription, and not its composition. Any conjectural dating would have to begin by identifying a point of particular irritation with GM on WBY's part; but there were so many of these, over a period of years, that any such conjecture would be highly unsafe. The lack of any alteration in the text as entered in the MS does indeed suggest that the work of composition was already complete when WBY decided to include these lines in his Journal.
