ABSTRACT
Date of composition. Composition of this poem took place substantially in Aug. 1910, but there are significant complications in the dating of its conception. The idea for the poem, and several of its verbal motifs, pre-date its execution by up to two years. WBY's compositional work on his play The Player Queen was both extensive and protracted, and it is not possible to determine exactly when many of the MS and TS elements were composed. Some early drafts may be from 1907, but WBY was working seriously on his play in the summer of 1908, and did so regularly thereafter. An outline of the poem's content had been present in WBY's plans for The Player Queen for a long time, and it was to be one of ‘a certain number of lyrics put into the mouth of one of the characters’ as early as 17 Jul. 1908 (CL 5, 258). A song for the Queen did not begin to take clear shape until at least 1909, and it was at Coole in the first half of Aug. 1910 that the lyric was put into something close to its final form: this process was complete by 17 Aug.
