One with Two Shadows

This is the earliest of three surviving manuscripts of the sonnet. It represents the state of the poem as DGR wrote it in 1848 when they played at their game of writing bouts rimés sonnets. This manuscript is one of the eighteen by DGR and (apparently) WMR preserved in the Duke University Library. The numbers heading each of these eighteen sonnets suggest that they are selected from a larger group, perhaps comprising at least forty-four sonnets. The two other manuscripts, one at the British Library and the other at Yale, are later and carry the title “Another Love”.