"Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms
for bears to dance to,
while longing to make music that will melt the stars."
-Flaubert
Another possibilty is that both poems are based on an unknown
antecedent which may or may not have the extra verses.
The question of the meaning of the extra verses is always a sticky
one, as in the case of Ben Jonson's "her triumph" aka Have you seen
but a bright lily grow: here either the copyists considered the
extra
verses irrelevant or, more likely, the poem circulated in an
abbreviated form prior to publication.
dt
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