A 127: etext transcription

This rough-copy draft, composed around 1877 (THJ, RWF), was found among Dickinson's papers after her death; it is a variant version—perhaps intended by Dickinson as an independent text?—of the second stanza of the poem beginning "After all | Birds have | been investigated." For an early fair-copy draft of the poem beginning "After all | Birds have | been investigated," see A 94-1 / 2 (about 1875 [RWF], about 1877 [THJ]); for an unbound fair-copy draft of the last lines of the poem beginning "Last to | adhere | When Summers | swerve away -," see A 298 (about 1877 [THJ, RWF]); for an identical fair-copy of the poem's final lines beginning "Last to | adhere | When Summers | swerve away -" and sent to Samuel Bowles, seeA 711 (about 1877 [THJ, RWF]); and, for another, later fair-copy of the poem beginning "After all | Birds have | been investigated" and sent to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, see BPL Higg 35 (about 1877 [THJ, RWF]). For a related fragment, see A 255 (about 1877 [THJ, RWF]). In Poems (1998), R. W. Franklin suggests that A 255 was composed after A 298 and A 711, but before BPL Higg 35, since the fair-copy to Higginson reflects some of the changes introduced in the previous drafts. The definitive compositional history of the textual constellation, however, remains open to speculation.

On the verso of A 127 is a message, in brown ink, from Abigail Cooper: "Voiceless thoughts hover often around thee - Today & other days they have bourne my warmest thanks for thy gift of choice, delicious fruit."