Venus Verticordia (corrected copy with alternate readings, British Library)

The text shows that this manuscript was almost certainly written either in 1868 or early in 1869. The text follows closely the version of the first printed text as it appeared in the Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1868. But DGR here begins to open the poem to the variants that would eventually establish themselves in the texts publshed in 1870 and 1881.