2. HEAVEN HAVEN. Contemporary autograph, on same page
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. HABIT OF PERFECTION. Two autographs in A; the earlierdated Jan. 18, 19, 1866. The second, which is a gooddeal altered, is apparently of same date as text of No. 2.Text follows this later version. Published in Miles. 4. WRECK OF THE DEUTSCHLAND. Text from B, title from A(see description of B on p. 94). In 'The Spirit of Man'the original first stanza is given from A, and varies;otherwise B was not much corrected. Another transcript,now at St. Aloysius' College, Glasgow, was made byRev. F. Bacon after A but before the correction of B.This was collated for me by the Rev. Father Geoffrey Bliss,S.J., and gave one true reading. Its variants are distin-guished by G in the notes to the poem. The labour spent on this great metrical experiment musthave served to establish the poet's prosody and perhapshis diction: therefore the poem stands logically as well aschronologically in the front of his book, like a great dragonfolded in the gate to forbid all entrance, and confident inhis strength from past success. This editor advises thereader to circumvent him and attack him later in the rear;for he was himself shamefully worsted in a brave frontalassault, the more easily perhaps because both subject andtreatment were distasteful to him. A good method ofapproach is to read stanza 16 aloud to a chance company.To the metrist and rhythmist the poem will be of interestfrom the first, and throughout. Stanza iv. 1. 7. Father Bliss tells me that the Voel is amountain not far from St. Beuno's College in N. Wales,where the poem was written: and Dr. Henry Bradley that_moel_ is primarily an adj. meaning _bald_: it becomesa fem, subst. meaning _bare hill_, and preceded by thearticle _y_ becomes _voel_, in modern Welsh spelt _foel_. Thisaccounts for its being written without initial capital, theword being used genetically; and the meaning, obscuredby _roped_, is that the well is fed by the trickles of waterwithin the flanks of the mountains.--Both A and B read_planks_ for _flanks_; G gives the correction. St. xi. 5. Two of the required stresses are on _we dream_. St. xii. 8. _reeve_, see note on Author's Preface, p. 101. St. xiv. 8. _these_. G has _there_; but the words between_shock_ and _these_ are probably parenthetical. St. xvi. 3. Landsmen may not observe the wrongness: seeagain No. 17, st. ix, and 39, line 10. I would have cor-rected this if the euphony had not accidentally forbiddenthe simplest correction. St. xvi. 7. _foam-fleece_ followed by full stop in A and B,by a comma in G.
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