The Anniversary. Autograph manuscript poem

Folio, 3 page manuscript poem, no doubt composed in 1841 on the 20th anniversary of the poet's marriage to Priscilla Maden Wiffen. "Twenty chequered years have past, / Summer suns and wintry weather, / Since, our lot in concert cast, / First we 'climbed the hill, together'...." Watts heads his poem with a quote from Milton: "The world was all before us, where to choose our place of rest and Providence our guide." The poem was included in "Heath's Book of Beauty" 1847 and reprinted (with some differences from our manuscript) in Watts's "Lyrics of the Heart" (1851).