Commentary
Introduction
The poem is one of the group of sonnets that
DGR and WMR wrote to rhymes set by each other in 1848 as a poetical exercise. The last few lines—the image of the gamster playing with his drink before throwing loaded dice— are arresting and quite effective.
Textual History: Composition
Textual History: Revision
Printing History
First printed by WMR in his 1911 edition, through not (apparently) from the Yale
manuscript, which has a variant in line 3.
Bibliographic
Paull F. Baum,
DGR: An Analytical List of Manuscripts in the
Duke University Library
(1931), 14-16, 56-65
Frances Winwar,
“Dante Gabriel's
or William Michael's?”
(March 1933), 312-315