ABSTRACT
Date of composition unknown. Presumably written soon after S.’s reading of Sydney Owenson’s (Lady Morgan’s) The Missionary: an Indian Tale (1811), which he had ‘just finished’ on 11 June (L i 101), though the novel contributed only the contrast between the uncorrupted Indian character and scenery, centred on the Vale of Kashmir, and the corruptions of imperialism. The plot seems partly derived from ‘The Poor Negro Sadi’ in Charlotte Dacre’s (Mrs Byrne’s) Hours of Solitude (1805) i 117–22. Sadi is forced from wife and home into slavery, but escapes by swimming to an English ship: Soft, soft blew the gale, and the green billows swelling, Gay sail’d the light vessel for Albion’s shore; Poor Sadi sigh’d deep for his wife and his dwelling, That wife and that dwelling he ne’er must see more. (37–40)
