This Day, sais Ralpho, I was free
Title:
Ralpho's Reflections Upon the Anniversary of His Wedding. Primary Text:
MS Folger, 27: first five stanzas are pasted over a previous poem which has been thus effectively destroyed, but which ended with present sixth stanza. Secondary Ed:
1903 Reynolds prints Folger text, 150-1; rpt of 1903 Reynolds: 1930 Fausset, 71-2. Comment:
Awkward because a censured narrative has replaced an earlier poem apparently about a hypocritical pretence of happy marriage; there are some hints in the censured lines of "The Petition for an Absolute Retreat" and "Jupiter and the Farmer," in some of the content of the fables, in Anne Finch's "On a Short Visit" and "A Tale" (in the MS Wellesley) that Anne and Heneage had their times of alienation; this poem (like "In love, who to a cure aspires") may record such a moment in their marriage or in another (Charles Finch's?) which the writer preferred to replace rather than expunge.
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