NOTES
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them in the text satisfies me. The word sheath is printed for sheaf of MS., and sheaf recurs in corrections. Dating of July 5, '76.
65. 'Moonrise. June 19, 1876.' H. Note at foot shows intention to rewrite with one stress more in the second half of each line, and the first is thus rewritten 'in the white of the dusk, in the walk of the morning'.
66. Cuckoo. From a scrap in H without date or title.
67. It being impossible to satisfy myself I give this MS. in facsimile as an example, after p. 92.
68. The child is father. From a newspaper cutting with another very poor comic triolet sent me by G. M. H. They are signed Bran. His comic attempts were not generally so successful as this is.
69. The shepherd's brow. In H. Various consecutive full drafts on the same sheet as 51, and date April 3, '89. The text is what seems to be the latest draft: it has no corrections. Thus its date is between 50 and 51. It might be argued that this sonnet has the same right to be recognised as a finished poem with the sonnets 44-47, but those had several years recognition whereas this must have been thrown off one day in a cynical mood, which he could not have wished permanently to intrude among his last serious poems.
70. 'To his Watch.' H. On a sheet by itself; apparently a fair copy with corrections embodied in this text, except that the original 8th line, which is not deleted, is preferred to the alternative suggestion, Is sweetest comfort's carol or worst woe's smart.
71. Strike, churl. H, on same page with a draft of part of No. 45.—l. 4, Have at is a correction for aim at.—This scrap is some evidence for the earlier dating of the four sonnets.
72. 'Epithalamion.' Four sides of pencilled rough sketches, and five sides of quarto first draft, on 'Royal University of Ireland' candidates paper, as if G. M. H. had written it while supervising an examination. Fragments in disorder with erasures and corrections; undated. H.—The text, which omits only two disconnected lines, is my arrangement of the fragments, and embodies the latest corrections. It was to have been an Ode on the occasion of his brother's
