The subtitle of the sonnet refers to the couch that was in the possession of
DGR's brother William (who published his
in 1886). DGR uses that devotional object to focus his sonnet's
meditation on a set of key (and related) Shelleyan ideas: sleep, death, and
“the veil which those who live/Call life”. DGR's sonnet
refers explicitly to a pair of important Shelleyan texts: the sonnet
“Lift Not the Painted Veil” and lines 191ff. of Act I of
DGR was re-reading Hogg's two-volume life of Shelley, published in 1858, in
the summer of 1881, and it may be that he wrote his sonnet at that time. On
the other hand, the other sonnets that eventually appeared in 1881 under the
heading
were written in 1880 and the poem may belong to that year.
Four manuscripts survive: a
It was first published in the 1881
as one of the group of sonnets he headed with the title