The fair-copy poem-draft on A 298, 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 final lines of the poem beginning "After all | Birds have | been investigated." It may or may not be a draft for a similar text sent to Samuel Bowles around this time (see below). 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 a rough-copy draft of the second stanza, see A 127 (about 1877 [THJ, RWF]); for a 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.

One editorial notation is penciled on A 298: at top, center, MTB: Bowles 208. The notation indicates that the text—or a version of it—was published in Letters (1931), 208.