Page:Shelley, a poem, with other writings (Thomson, Debell).djvu/103

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AND WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI.
85

refer distributively to the accumulated imagery of the whole sentence: Still to the lute; dark and dry to the stream (and the former also probably to the vapour, still floating in the poet's mind); unremembered to the dream.

For very minute points:—

p. 100. Would it not be worth while to print "Sang dirges in the wind"; and similarly p. 105 "the grass that sprang"?

Lastly, as a pure mathematical point or position without magnitude, should not nought be naught as the negation of aught?

Pray excuse the abrupt brevity of these remarks, which could only be got written now by being written rapidly.

I am, Dear Sir,
Yours very Respectfully
James Thomson.

P. S. From a conversation yesterday I gather that I may be very probably called to start at two or three days' notice in search of the Heathen Chinee among the Rocky Mountains, on business of the Company of which I am the unworthy Secretary pro tem. (The Champion Gold and Silver Mines Compy. of Colorado).

The trip, including sojourn of two or three months, would keep me absent four or five months. If therefore you have no further reports from me for some time, pray do not account me neglectful of Shelley and yourself, but blame the said Heathen Chinee—if not grateful to him as the cause of the reprieve.