To a sheepskin gave the story, Said he saw you in your glory, And pledging with contented smack Souls of Poets dead and gone, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field or mossy cavern, 20 25 Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern? (18-19) In the manuscript, Says for Said, and new-old sign, not new old-sign as in the first edition. (23-6) The poem ends thus in the manuscript : Souls of Poets dead and gone, Are the winds a sweeter home, Than the merry Mermaid Tavern? ROBIN HOOD. TO A FRIEND. No! those days are gone away, Many times have winter's shears, 5 Of these charming verses there are two extant manuscripts,—one being apparently the first draft, corrected and altered in course of composition, and the other a very careful copy written at the end of the copy of Endymion in Sir Charles Dilke's possession, already referred to more than once. The draft was found by the late Mr. S. R. Townshend Mayer among the manuscripts of Leigh Hunt; and, as it was written on the same piece of paper with Shelley's Sonnet to the Nile, it is not very hazardous to refer the composition to about the same date-February 1818 (see Letter of the 16th of that month). Sir Charles Dilke's copy of the poem is dated simply "1818", and headed thus: To John Reynolds, In answer to his Robin Hood Sonnets. The Sonnets in question, published in The Garden of Florence &c. (1821), will be found in the Appendix. The finished manuscript corresponds almost exactly with the printed text: the draft shows considerable variations. (6-7) Cancelled reading Many times old Winter's shears (10) In the draft this line is Since Men paid no Rent and Leases. (13) Cancelled reading, And the whistle shrill is... (16) Cancelled reading, No old hermit with his... Probably it was meant to finish the line with staff.. (18) The draft reads Jests deep in within }a a forest drear. And there is then the following couplet, cancelled: No more barbed arrows fly Through one's own roof to the sky... (19) In the draft thus (21-2) Rejected readings, Planets seven, and polar beam. Never one, of all the clan, Messenger for spicy ale. 25 30 (25-7) Cancelled reading Never meet one of all the clan Rattling on an empty can An old hunting ditty... (29-30) In the draft, Mistress is struck out in favour of Hostess; and in the finished copy pasture and Trent are connected with a hyphen. In the finished manuscript the preposition in line 32 is to; but in the printed edition for. Instead of the present lines 33 to 42 Keats first wrote the following: No those times are flown and past. In the forest now a days? She would weep and he would craze. But after finishing the poem he wrote on the other side of the paper the delightful lines as they now stand, except that line 37 is All are gone and all is past! and in line 39 tufted stands in place of turfed. In the finished copy the words should be and should have in lines 38 and 40 are underlined. Gone, the merry morris din; 35 40 She would weep, and he would craze : 45 She would weep that her wild bees Sang not to her-strange! that honey Fallen beneath the Woodma[n]'s strokes... (49) In the draft, then stands cancelled in favour of yet; and there is an unfinished line struck out immediately afterwards, Though the Glories... |