As with the two sonnets that flank this one in the 1870
these airs” (line 1), as well as the whole attendant mode of presentness, refers equally to the context 1869-1870/1881, and to a context ca. 1853-1855. A
“gloom”calls to another
“gloom”, as it were. So we are encouraged to see that the original sonnet (of 1855) might itself constitute the
“old rain”(line 4) referred to in the sonnet of 1869-1870. So “
this hour” (line 5) trembles with an uncanny forecast and retrospect simultaneously, with the two historically-defined moments coming in this text to mirror each other. The entire sonnet is organized around such mirrorings.
In this perspective one sees the sonnet trying to
develop (particularly in the sestet) an argument about a benevolent
inertia operating through any “harvest of new tares
” (line 5).
my latest sonnet
”, to three of his friends: to Allingham on Does it smack though of
Tupper at all?—it seems to, in copying
”); to William Bell Scott, and to Holman Hunt (in letters of
DGR revised the text of 1855 when he came to print it in the proofs for the 1870
First printed in September 1869 as part of the
“a tardy but sincere love for some humble person whose affection
he has abused and betrayed in his expectation of a sincere passion for some more
exalted lover who will appear in due time”
(Doughty,
“since”) was better than the received reading; WMR opted for the latter (see Doughty and Wahl,
The last simile I heard as a fact common in some parts of the country” (Doughty and Wahl,