A 249 / 250: etext transcription

These fragments, separated by horizontal lines and shifting between prose and verse, fall outside conventional genre categories; their relations to one another and Dickinson's final intentions toward them are only partially revealed. It is possible that she was copying unrelated fragments onto a single writing surface in order to create a more permanent record of them. Of the four fragments two reappear as traces in other texts. The first fragment, "immured in | Heaven - what | a Cell -," appears as the opening lines of a poem-letter composed around 1883 (RWF) or 1884 (THJ) and sent to Susan Dickinson (Jones); it may also appear, much altered, in a poem embedded in the draft of a letter to Helen Hunt Jackson composed around 1885 (THJ, RWF) and containing the lines, "Immured the whole | of Life | Within a magic | Prison | We reprimand the | Happiness | That too com- | petes with Heaven -" (A 819). The (silent) quotation from Antony and Cleopatra (II.ii.225–226) in the third fragment, "With thanks | for my health | I send you | Antony's | Orchard - | who paid his | Heart for | what his | Eyes ate, | only -," appears altered and in quotation marks in a message to Susan Dickinson (HCL B 24) composed around 1883 (THJ), and, later, in a message to Ned Dickinson (HCL B 118) composed around 1885 (THJ). The remaining fragments do not reappear in any other extant compositions by Dickinson. The first autonomous fragment, "Undertow of | the Organ," may be the nucleus of a lost or unwritten poem or, alternatively, a breakaway line from a poem, a letter, or other composition not yet identified. The second autonomous fragment, beginning "Solomon says," may be a brief but complete pensée, a passage destined for incorporation into another composition, perhaps a letter or a longer meditation; it contains an allusion to Solomon's feast in 1 Kings 8:65. The final text, a poem-draft beginning "Lad of Athens," is embedded in a letter to an unidentified recipient, possibly Samuel Bowles Jr.(A 713), composed around 1883 (THJ, RWF). A single stray mark is visible along the right edge of A 249; it does not appear to belong to the extant texts.

One editorial notation is penciled on A 250: bottom right, MTB: Letters, 415. The notation is a reference to the first published source of the lines, Letters, 1931.