Note 20 — Early Poems (continued 2)

Added in 1845 as a substitute for “What nights we had in Egypt! I could hit His humours while I crossed them: O the life I led him, and the dalliance and the wit, The flattery and the strife, which is the reading of 1843. Canopus is a star in Argo, not visible in the West, but a conspicuous feature in the sky when seen from Egypt, as Pliny notices, Hist. Nat., vi., xxiv. “Fatentes Canopum noctibus sidus ingens et clarum”. Cf. Manilius, Astron., i., 216-17, “Nusquam invenies fulgere Canopum donec Niliacas per pontum veneris oras,” and Lucan, Pharsal., viii., 181-3.