Commentary
Introduction
As with all the pieces in the
<xref doc="a.44b-1869.raw">Songs</xref>
section
of
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">The House of Life</xref>
, this one echoes recurrent themes. It should be compared,
particularly in reference to its second stanza, with poems like
<xref doc="a.2-1850.raw">Autumn Idleness</xref>
and
<xref doc="a.2-1853.raw">The Hill Summit</xref>
.
Textual History: Composition
According to WMR the poem was composed in
1859 (
1911
). There is no hard evidence that confirms or disconfirms that dating.
Textual History: Revision
WMR used this poem to make some general suggestions to DGR
about the printing of the poems in the proofs to the 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.1stedn.rad" workcode="3-1859" from="245">
<hi rend="i">Poems</hi>
</xref>
(see
Peattie,
WMR. Selected Letters
,
217
).
Printing History
First printed as part of the pre-publication process
for the 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.1stedn.rad" workcode="3-1859" from="245">Poems</xref>
, in the Penkill
Proofs, August 1869.
Those proofs have no special organization of the
poetic units. At the next proof stage, the so-called
A Proofs (Sept. 1869),
this poem is placed in a loosely organized section under the heading
<xref doc="a.1-1870.apra.trox.rad" workcode="44-1869">Sonnets and Songs,
Towards a Work to be Called <title level="wrk">The House of Life
. DGR experimented with
the order of this section until, in the final proof stage (realized at the
beginning of March, 1870) this poem and ten others were grouped as
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">The House of
Life's</xref>
integral section
of
<xref doc="a.44b-1869.raw">Songs</xref>
. In the 1881
<xref doc="a.1-1881.raw">Poems. A New Edition</xref>
, this section is detached from
<xref doc="a.22-1881.raw">The House of Life</xref>
and placed under the heading
<xref doc="a.1-1881.1stedn.rad" workcode="20-1881" from="[236]">Lyrics</xref>
, and two other poems are added to the group.
In 1870 the poem was printed with a musical score by Florence
A. Marshall.
Literary
The clear Shakespeare allusion (to Sonnet 73) in
lines 9-16 is especially apt for DGR's theme of the transience of love.