"
The "poor innocent thing" was the sonnet beginning "Not on sad
Stygian shore," the first of those I have grouped under the heading
"The Life after Death." It appears in his notebooks with this
introductory sentence:
"Having now learned Shakespeare's Sonnets by heart--and there are
very few which I do not find I understand the better for having done
this--on Saturday night last at the Hotel Zeeland at Flushing,
finding myself in a meditative mood, I wrote the following with a
good deal less trouble than I anticipated when I took pen and paper
in hand. I hope I may improve it."
Of course I liked the sonnet very much and he did write "a few more"-
-among them the two on Handel which I have put after "Not on sad
Stygian shore" because he intended that they should follow it. I am
sure he would have wished this volume to close with these three
sonnets, especially because the last two of them were inspired by
Handel, who was never absent from his thoughts for long. Let me
conclude these introductory remarks by reproducing a note made in
1883:
"Of all dead men Handel has had the largest place in my thoughts. In
fact I should say that he and his music have been the central fact in
my life ever since I was old enough to know of the existence of
either life or music. All day long--whether I am writing or painting
or walking, but always--I have his music in my head; and if I lose
sight of it and of him for an hour or two, as of course I sometimes
do, this is as much as I do.
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