SOURCE: "The Growth of a Poem: Edwin Muir's 'Day and Night'," in Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. XXII, 1987, pp. 106-14.

In the following examination of "Day and Night, " Huberman traces "a pattern of development from manuscript to poem. "

Because it is not often that the original seed from which a poem grew can be identified, and that growth traced, a single manuscript sentence in an undated notebook among Edwin Muir's papers in the National Library of Scotland is of particular importance. For that sentence, "Now I lie down and wrap the night about me,"¹ is manifestly the seed out of which developed the entire poem, "Day and Night," printed in Muir's last collection, One Foot in Eden. But merely to say this, of course, is not enough. The case requires proof. Just how did the poem emerge from this beginning? How did its three stanzas unfold, image by...