Note 996:2 — FRAGMENTS[996:1]
Reading edition
This quatrain, described as 'The concluding stanza of an Elegy on a Lady who died in Early Youth', is from part of a memorandum in S. T. C.'s handwriting headed 'Relics of my School-boy Muse; i. e. fragments of poems composed before my fifteenth year'. It follows First Advent of Love, 'O fair is Love's first hope,' &c. (vide ante, p. 443), and is compared with Age—a stanza written forty years later than the preceding—'Dewdrops are the gems of morning,' &c. (p. 440).
Another Version.
O'er her piled grave the gale of evening sighs, And flowers will grow upon its grassy slope, I wipe the dimming waters from mine eye Even on the cold grave dwells the Cherub Hope.
Unpublished Letter to Thomas Poole, Feb. 1. 1801, on the death of Mrs. Robinson ('Perdita').