ABSTRACT
Published 1851, Poems, 7th edn; among ‘English Idyls’. Written 1839 (Mem. i 174), which is the date of the FitzGerald MS at Trinity. The FitzGerald MS begins (at the top of a page) with the closing lines of Edwin’s speech (ll. 62–70), in this version adapting further lines from The Gardener’s Daughter; see ll. 26–40n. The poem was inspired by T.’s disillusionment with Rosa Baring; on this love affair, see Thy rosy lips ( II 59). She married Robert Duncombe Shafto. The complaint, here treated more lightly (‘the rentroll Cupid’), is treated tragically as ‘marriage-hindering Mammon’ in Aylmer’s Field, Locksley Hall, and Maud. T. criticizes his earlier manner in the poet Edwin Morris, most of whose lines are from the MS version (e.g. T.Nbk 17) of The Gardener’s Daughter, another poem inspired by Rosa, of which the speaker is again a landscape painter. Edward Bull’s views on women were to be more fully presented by the King in The Princess. There are three drafts in T.Nbk 26; in the first, there is no character Edward Bull; and Morris tells of an episode, suggesting Maud, in which his lover’s cousin jealously lies in wait for him with a cudgel, unsuccessfully. One important revision is that which eliminates too harsh a resentment against Rosa, cutting out ‘O facile nose of wax!’, and ‘the doll’ (ll. 122–5n). All variants are below.
