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Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883)

Note 34a — XIII.

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Haydon entered these verses in his Diary for May, 1846: ‘The struggle is severe, for myself I care not, but for her so dear to me I feel. It presses on her mind, and in a moment of pain, she wrote the following simple bit of feeling to Frederick, who is in South America, on Board The Grecian.’ There are seven stanzas in the original, but FitzGerald has omitted in his transcript the third and fourth and slightly altered one or two of the lines. He called them ‘A poor Mother’s Verses.’

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