ABSTRACT
First publ. Cornhill Magazine xxxvii (1914) 289 (along with B.’s Latin lines ‘On Being Defied to Express in a Hexameter: “You Ought to Sit on the Safety-Valve.”’). The Cornhill’s editors state that ‘The original MSS. of these unpublished verses were discovered lately among some papers of the late Mr. George Smith’ [of the firm Smith, Elder, B.’s publishers]. Our text is that of the untitled MS at the University of Toronto Library. Underneath the poem B. has written ‘From Zappi. RB. Given to Ba “for love’s sake,” Siena, Sept. 27 ‘50.’ The quotation is probably an allusion to Sonnets from the Portuguese xiv 1–2: ‘If thou must love me, let it be for nought / Except for love’s sake only’ (ll. 1–2).
