ABSTRACT
This celebrated lyric is drafted roughly in ink in Nbk 17 p. 123 rev. (BSM vi 340–1). The first stanza is entered halfway down the page, below a line of pencilled verse that appears to be connected with the draft of Ginevra (Longman iv, no. 398) on the surrounding pages. A revised draft of the second stanza, inserted above between lines of transcription from Pindar’s Pythian ix 39, reworks a first draft of its opening three lines at the foot of the page. The words I am despair are scrawled in the top right corner. Carlene A. Adamson speculates that the cancelled draft I see the rivulet dance/I see the green leaves glance/I feel the wind, & stand on the seashore on p. 115 rev. may constitute the opening of a third, rejected stanza (BSM vi 39–40, 320–21). For the view of Forman and others that the drafts of O time, O night, O day (Longman iv 191–2, no. 392) in Nbk 12 ff. 9v, *31v and *30v are preliminary to the Nbk 17 draft, see the headnote to that poem.
