This is one of a number of late manuscripts in which the opposite sides of the paper constitute separate textual spaces. A 309 carries a rough-copy poem-draft beginning "Of whom so dear | the name to hear" and composed around 1880 (THJ, RWF). A 310 carries an autonomous fragment or lyric pensée, presumably composed after the poem-draft was abandoned. One line of the fragment—"persistent as perdition"—appears as a trace or echo in an earlier, rough-copy poem-draft beginning "Risk is the Hair | that holds the Tun" (A 339) and composed around 1872 (THJ, RWF); the trace line in the poem reads, "Per - suasive as Perdition." In this instance it is possible that Dickinson remembered the line from the poem-draft of "Risk is the Hair" when composing A 310 and used a variant of it. Both the poem-draft inscribed on A 309 and the fragment inscribed on A 310 are written within the rule of the paper; the substitutions and variants, however, many of which remain unresolved, are added interlinearly.

One editorial notation—"yes"—is penciled on A 310 in Millicent Todd Bingham's hand; it appears beside the same word in Dickinson's hand, clarifying the faint and difficult to decipher text.