ABSTRACT
Printed by Mary S. in 1839 with the Poems of 1818; dating is difficult, but possibly composed during the first week of July 1818 (although eds, e.g. Reiman (1977) generally place the poem somewhat later). Four versions survive: a draft in Nbk 11 (its position and context in the nbk do not suggest any conclusive dating; see BSM xviii 24–5, 281); a holograph fair copy on pages detached from Harvard Nbk 1 and now in the Morgan Library & Museum (see MYRS v Introduction xxii–xxiv, 76, 170 for discussion of this MS and its implications); and two posthumously-printed texts, 1824 and 1839. The descent of the text is perplexing, as Mary S. printed in 1824, and again in 1839, with one entirely different line, a version conspicuously better than S.’s fair copy in Harvard Nbk 1, which itself was copied into that nbk presumably some two years after the poem’s composition. Mary S.’s own source or sources are unknown. It is possible that the mood of isolated and disappointed dejection in the second part of the sonnet is related to the vindictive personal attack on S. as author of RofI in the Quarterly, news of which reached S. in early July 1818. The poem shares with Alas, this is not what I thought life was (see Longman ii 415–7, no. 174), which is drafted a few pages later in Nbk 11, the possible influence of Barthelemy, which Mary and S. were reading in June and July 1818 (Mary Jnl i 215–21). If a connection with RofI is valid, S. might have returned to this sonnet at the time of his proposing a revised edition of RofI to Ollier (16 February, 25 September 1821; L ii 263, 354). DP, submitted to Ollier at the same time, also introduces the ‘veil’ symbol (‘and whether [poetry] spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life’s dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being’; Prose 295). The sonnet may also, or alternatively, have been revised as one of the accompanying poems sent with J&M to Ollier in November 1820 as one of S.’s ‘saddest verses [all] raked up into one heap’ (L ii 246; see headnote to J&M). Besides improving lines 12–3, S. may perhaps have inserted an alternative version above line 6 and then underlined the original to indicate re-instatement (possibly after realising the awkward repetition of there in lines 2 and 6, referring to different locations). If Mary S. mistook the underlining for a cancellation when preparing 1824, she may have realised her error when preparing 1839. Otherwise, it is hard to explain the appearance of line 6 in 1824, which does not occur either in the draft or in Harvard Nbk 1 (or in Mary S.’s own subsequent editions). The text here adopted is 1839, on the hypothesis that this text probably derives from S.’s own best-revised version.
