Relation of poem to the “Account” (MS VIII)—Both Collingwood and the editors of the Library Edition were evidently baffled by this strange fragment (if in fact it is fragmentary) and omitted it from their versions of the “Account”. Prior to its editing for ERM, the poem has remained unpublished. Indeed, apart from its unidentified topographical reference to a lake, one might question whether it belongs to the tour poem. It seems a pointed omission on Ruskinʼs part that, in drafting it, he skipped over the poem in his system of numbering lines of verse. (See the entry for the poem in MS VIII: Contents, b.1.) Nonetheless, the fragment is thematically connected with the poem that follows it, “Not such the night whose stormy might” [“Evening at Chamouni”], which certainly does belong to the “Account”. Both poems turn on a figure of falling asleep beneath waves of white, whether waves of snow or water—potentially a sleep of death, literally so in the latter case (in the snow high on Mont Blanc), and possibly symbolically in the former case. From this sleep, an awakening to a kind of resurrection is suggested. The significance of the poem for the “Account” may have lain less in its literal topographical connection than in its psychological and spiritual significance for Ruskin during the process of composition.

Closing parenthesis mark (MS VIII)—The meaning of this mark is unknown. It could be intended to extend the parenthetical enclosure from line six, but those previous parentheses seem logically placed. Or it could be intended to flag the closing quotation mark, which is missing, but the pronouns used in the final two lines suggest that a quotation mark belongs at the end of the final line, not the end of the penultimate line.