The poem is untitled in the MS VIII draft.

The title “Song” was first applied to the poem in Poems by J.R. (1850)—at whose suggestion is unknown. This title was retained in all subsequent reprintings.

Poem; abab, alternating tetrameter and trimeter.

MS VIII.

Sometime between July 1832 and April or early May 1833, and within that span perhaps closer to April 1833. In Poems by J.R. (1850), the “Song” is ascribed to “aetat. fourteen”—that is, between 19 February 1833 and February 1834 (Poems by J.R. [1850], 3).

W. G. Collingwood dated the poem earlier than the date ascribed in Poems by J.R., assigning the poem to “some time before the author actually reached the age of fourteen”, suggesting that Ruskin wrote it in “winter 1832–33”. Collingwood based his rationale on “the position of the rough draft” in MS VIII, and on the supposed “fact that the author had not been among mountains that year, but only to Dover and Hastings”, thus accounting for the poemʼs nostalgia (Poems [4^o, 1891], 1:115, 280; Poems [8^o, 1891], 1:116, 282; and see The Ruskinsʼ Visits to Seaside Resorts and Spas).

The poemʼs position in MS VIII allows for a broad span of possible times of composition, from July 1832 to April or early May 1833 (see Composition and Publication).

The poem was first published in Poems by J.R. (1850), having been selected by the editors as the opening poem of that collection (pp. 3–4). It was reprinted in W. G. Collingwood, ed., Poems (4^o, 1891), 1:115–16; Poems (8^o, 1891), 1:115–16; and Ruskin, Works, 2:3–4. In 1879, the scholar and book collector W. E. A. Axon (1846–1913) featured the poem in “John Ruskin: A Bibliographical Biography”, taking the text from Poems by J.R.

In MS VIII, “I weary for the torrent leaping” along with the poem “Have ye never heard of the Brownie wight” is situated between the poems “Through the stone and ancient gate” and “My Fatherʼs Birthday: The Month of May”, the latter a birthday ode for May 1833. This section of the manuscript (List a.2), as compared to a preceding section (List a.1) that was composed during 1831–32, represents a broad span of time, possibly stretching from the familyʼs return from the Tour of 1832 at the end of June 1832 to John Jamesʼs birthday in May 1833. In this space of possibly ten or eleven months, fewer than ten poems occupy this section of the notebook, all of them brief and some fragmentary (see MS VIII: Section a).

Within that sequence, the position of “I weary for the torrent leaping” suggests that Ruskin composed it closer to April 1833, when he would have drafted “My Fatherʼs Birthday: The Month of May”. This inference confirms the poemʼs association with age fourteen according to Poems by J.R. At this time, Ruskin would have been eagerly anticipating the familyʼs departure for the Tour of 1833, their first major tour of the Continent.

The MS VIII draft is annotated in the hand of John James Ruskin, who penciled numbers next to stanzas, indicating his rearrangement of the poem for Poems by J.R. (1850) (see textual glosses).

The poemʼs topic may have to do less with yearning for mountain scenery than with desire to compose verse about scenery of any kind. Collingwood thought it “curious that [Ruskinʼs] mountain‐yearning does not carry him back to Snowdon”, a highlight of the Tour of 1831, which included Wales, “but to earlier visions of the Lake Country, his first and last mountain‐love” (Poems [4^o, 1891], 1:280; Poems (8^o, 1891), 1:282). The yearning is not just for place, however, but also for song: “My harp is sunk to rest” and “My lyres voice is still”.

In 1832, Ruskinʼs parents decided to check the amount of time and energy Ruskin could devote to poetry composition. Concern had arisen, particularly on Margaret Ruskinʼs part, over Johnʼs voluminous versifying during 1831–32, in which he was encouraged by his fatherʼs rewards of a farthing or halfpenny per line of poetry. Now, in January 1833, John James repentantly wrote to a friend, “We restrain his poetic Efforts”, even as the proud father enclosed a sample of Johnʼs writing (a letter, not a poem), and boasted how his “Talents” were “great for his age” (letter to Richard Gray, 17 January 1833, in Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 276; and see Hanson, “Psychology of Fragmentation”).

In 1849, when preparing the Poems by J.R. (1850), John James may have remembered the circumstances of this poemʼs composition. If so, he was playing a complicated family joke by placing the “Song” at the head of the collection. Ruskin had now silenced himself as a poet, abandoning his “lyreʼs voice” for prose composition.