ABSTRACT
These lines are written in Nbk 10, on the same page with the first stanza of To Sophia’ (Thou art fair, and few are fairer’); for the possible adaptation of that poem from what was originally an unused stanza for Asia’s song at the end of PU II v, see headnote to To Sophia’. Various suggestions have been made about the proper context of the present lines (see e.g. Peck ii 161, White ii 174), and they too may be a discarded passage for PU (perhaps for the end of II i); but they are probably related to the same impulse which produced other fanciful fragments nearby in the nbk, and may therefore date from around S.’s arrival in Rome for his second visit, in early March 1819 (the violet of line 5 suggests spring).
