ABSTRACT
Published 1865. Written Oct. 1833 (Y.MS), immediately after T. heard of the death of Arthur Hallam. Spedding described it to T. as ‘one of those pieces which nobody except yourself can write, and I think the most exquisite of an exquisite race’ (19 Sept. 1834; Letters i 117–18). It is in the T.MS of In Memoriam, T.Nbk 13. T. probably delayed publication because it was too directly personal. In revising it for 1865, he veiled and objectified the poem by adding the title; by addressing it to another, changing ‘my’ to ‘thy’; and by omitting two explicit stanzas, ll. 15 ^ 16. All variants from Heath MS and T.MS are below. T. had used the same unusual stanza for My life is full (I 383), a comparable poem on death and Nature addressed to Hallam in his lifetime.
