Line 4 (1904)—Charles Eliot Norton, in editing the poem for the “Letters of John Ruskin” as published in the Atlantic Monthly, inserted a stanza break between lines 4 and 5 (“Letters of John Ruskin,” ed. Norton, 94:164). However, he did not carry over this pause to the version published in Norton, ed., Letters of John Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton, 1:197–98; and the editors of the Library Edition likewise reverted to Ruskinʼs original unbroken flow. Norton also inserted a semicolon in line 8 to separate clauses.

Line 6 (MS III)—In the MS III version, a comma follows against, which is not present in the version that Ruskin copied to include in his May 1827 letter to his father. In the MS III version, although Ruskin has advanced to writing with pen and ink, he continues as in his earlier, pencil manuscripts to have difficulty placing punctuation on and below the baseline; see Editorial and Encoding Rationale and Methodology: Commas, Periods, and Other Punctuation.

Line 9 (1827; MS III; 1904)—In the MS III version, a period divides the clauses; in the version that Ruskin copied to include in his May 1827 letter to his father, Ruskin used a semicolon, which appears to have been overwritten with a period. In Norton, ed., Letters of John Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton, 1:197–98, Norton printed a semicolon.