First publ. B & P vii (DR & L), 6 Nov. 1845, as the first of three numbered sections with the collective title Home-Thoughts, from Abroad. The second section consisted of Here’s to Nelson’s memory, later incl. in Nationality in Drinks (see II 248); the third consisted of the lines later called Home-Thoughts, from the Sea (II 246). The title Home-Thoughts, from Abroad was given exclusively to the first section when it was repr. in 1849; it was then repr. 1863, 18652, 1868, 1872, 1888. Our text is 1845. A fair-copy MS, with some variants, is in the Morgan Library (Collections E170, p. 410); it may be the one given to EBB. at a meeting on 3 Oct. 1845, in response to her request, in a letter to B. of 1 Oct., for an autograph for Mary Hunter, the daughter of the Rev. George Barrett Hunter (Correspondence xi 107). B. responded: ‘Now I will write you the verses .. some easy ones out of a paper-full meant to go between poem & poem in my next number, and break the shock of collision’ (2 Oct., ibid. 108). This implies that the poem had been written some time before; a likely date on internal grounds would be the spring of 1845, supported by refs. in B.’s letters to EBB., e.g. 26 Feb. 1845, headed ‘Wednesday morning—Spring!’ and continuing: ‘Real warm Spring, dear Miss Barrett, and the birds know it’ (ibid. x 97). Another topic in the letters of this period concerned England’s relation to Italy (see headnote to England in Italy, p. 255).
When she saw the poem, EBB. wrote on 4 Oct. (Correspondence xi 109–10):
Your spring-song is full of beauty as you know very well—& “that’s the wise thrush,” so characteristic of you (& of the thrush too) that I was sorely tempted to ask you to write it “twice over,” . . & not send the first copy to Mary Hunter notwithstanding my promise to her. And now when you come to print these fragments, would it not be well if you were to stoop to the vulgarism of prefixing some word of introduction, as other people do, you know, . . a title . . a name? You perplex your readers often by casting yourself on their intelligence in these things—and although it is true that readers in general are stupid & cant understand, it is still more true that they are lazy & wont understand . . & they dont catch your point of sight at first unless you think it worth while to push them by the shoulders & force them into the right place. Now these fragments . . you mean to print them with a line between . . & not one word at the top of it . . now dont you? And then people will read
“Oh, to be in England”
& say to themselves … “Why who is this? … who’s out of England?” Which is an extreme case of course,—but you will see what I mean . . & often I have observed how some of the very most beautiful of your lyrics have suffered just from your disdain of the usual tactics of writers in this one respect.
B. replied: ‘Thank you, thank you. I will devise titles—I quite see what you say, now you do say it’ (6 Oct., ibid. 111). In her letter of 21–22 Oct. (ibid. 134), EBB. further suggested numbering the sections, advice which B. also took DeVane (Handbook 163) suggests that the DR & L title may have been influenced by that of J. H. Newman’s pamphlet Home Thoughts Abroad (1836); in her letter of 1 Oct. requesting the autograph, EBB. mentioned Shelley’s Letters from Abroad (Correspondence xi 106). B.’s contrast between England and ‘Abroad’ inverts that drawn between England and Italy in Byron’s Beppo 321–92 (‘With all its sinful doings, I must say, / That Italy’s a pleasant place to me’), thereby echoing the preference in Wordsworth’s I Travelled Among Unknown Men: ‘I travelled among unknown men, / In lands beyond the sea; / Nor, England! did I know till then / What love I bore to thee’ (1–4). For another comparison in B. between Italy and England, in which Italy is preferred, see De Gustibus (III 25).
Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And who wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
5 That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!
And after April, when May follows,
10 And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows—
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over
15 Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields are rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower,
20 —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
Title.] no comma in 1884 (the corr. reissue of 1872 and 1880).
1–4.] printed as two lines in 1872, 1884.
1. In his letter of 6 Oct. 1845, referring to EBB.’s projected trip to Italy, B. made one of his very rare self-quotations: ‘Oh to be in Pisa. Now that E. B. B. is there!’ (Correspondence xi 111).
3. who] whoever (1849–88).
7. orchard] fruit tree (Morgan MS).
8. England—now] England now (Morgan MS).
11–13. See Pippa iii 248–9n. (p. 155).
11. my] the (Morgan MS).
17. are] look (1849–88). hoary: white; lit., the colour of an old man’s hair.
19. dower: gift, endowment; lit., dowry.