Note 152:2 — SONNET[152:2]
Reading edition
First published in the 'Biographical Supplement' to the Biographia Literaria, 1847, ii. 379. First collected in P. and D. W., 1877-80. This and the two succeeding sonnets were enclosed in a letter to Poole, dated November 1, 1796. A note was affixed to the sonnet 'On Receiving', &c.: 'This sonnet puts in no claim to poetry (indeed as a composition I think so little of them that I neglected to repeat them to you) but it is a most faithful picture of my feelings on a very interesting event. When I was with you they were, indeed, excepting the first, in a rude and undrest shape.'