ABSTRACT
Mary included this lyric in 1824 without date and entitled simply ‘To —— ’. In 1839 she grouped it with the ‘Poems Written in 1821’. No transcription in her hand is known to survive; the only recorded manuscript is the holograph draft in pencil with ink revisions on p. 7 (and a few lines on p. 6) of Nbk 11. The ink revisions appear to have been made at two different times, as BSM xviii 278 points out. Despite minor differences between the draft and the text that appeared in 1824 — for which see the notes to ll. 10 and 15 — there is no sufficient reason to suppose that Mary had access to another MS source than Nbk 11. Below and partly beneath the untidy, and in places unresolved, draft of the third stanza are the pencilled lines: Alas we know not what we do When we speak words — & I to thee I [?that] have been false
