[125:1] The 'Monody', &c., dated in eds. 1796, 1797, 1803, 'October, 1794,' was first published at Cambridge in 1794, in Poems, By Thomas Rowley [i. e. Chatterton] and others edited by Lancelot Sharpe (pp. xxv-xxviii). An Introductory Note was prefixed:—'The Editor thinks himself happy in the permission of an ingenious friend to insert the following Monody.' The variants marked 1794 are derived from that work. The 'Monody' was not included in Sibylline Leaves, 1817. For MS. variants vide ante, 'Monody', &c., Christ's Hospital Version.
Coleridge told Cottle, May 27, 1814 that lines 1-4 were written when he was 'a mere boy' (Reminiscences, 1847, p. 348); and, again, April 22, 1819, he told William Worship that they were written 'in his thirteenth year as a school exercise'. The Monody numbered 107 lines in 1794, 143 in 1796, 135 in 1797, 119 in 1803, 143 in 1828, 154 in 1829, and 165 lines in 1834.
[127:1] Avon, a river near Bristol, the birth-place of Chatterton.
LINENOTES:
[[1-15]]
When faint and sad o'er Sorrow's desart wild
Slow journeys onward, poor Misfortune's child;
When fades each lovely form by Fancy drest,
And inly pines the self-consuming breast;
(No scourge of scorpions in thy right arm dread,
No helméd terrors nodding o'er thy head,)
Assume, O Death! the cherub wings of Peace,
And bid the heartsick Wanderer's Anguish cease.
1794, 1796, 1797, 1803, 1828.
[Lines 1-15 of the text were first printed in 1829.]
[[16]]
these] yon 1794, 1796, 1797, 1803, 1828.