To May an unpublished autograph poem by Leigh Hunt

HUNT, Leigh (1784-1859). To May. For not making her appearance on Old May Day.
Autograph manuscript poem, c1805-1830.
 
Bifolium (200 x 120 mm), watermarked wove paper, folded once; three stanzas on the first page, a fourth on the third. Some creasing and handling wear, but entirely legible. Very good. 
 
A seemingly unpublished poem by Leigh Hunt, the essayist, critic, and editor of The Examiner, and a central figure in the Romantic literary circle associated with John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. 
 
Hunt had worked on verse before along a similar theme: this being "May" and also "May and the Poets", both published in periodicals. The present poem turns on a playful conceit: the speaker addresses “May” as though a person who has failed to appear on Old May Day. Beneath this light tone lies a simple observation of unseasonable weather: an early promise of spring that gives way to rain and the reassertion of April conditions. The fleeting illusion of May—figured as a brief, wanted, dreamlike visitation—is replaced by one of disappointment. 
 
Apparently unpublished and untraced in Hunt’s collected poems.