A 462: etext transcription

Physical Description
- Manuscript: A 462
- Date: [about 1873 (THJ, RWF)]
- Status: poem, rough-copy draft, with alternatives
- Formula: 2 fragments, pinned
- Paper: fragment 1: wove, white, blue-ruled stationery; fragment 2: wove, white stationery embossed A PIRIE & SONS 1871
- Dimensions: fragment 1: 65 x 100 mm; fragment 2: 42 x 138 mm
- Edges: fragment 1: bottom, right: torn; fragment 2: top, bottom, left: torn
- Folds: fragment 1: folded horizontally in half; fragment 2: unfolded
- Media: pencil
- Hand: rough
Collection
- Amherst College Library
Transmission History
- MSS from LND to MLT, 1891?
Publication History
- Poems (1955), P 1263; Poems (1998), P 1286 (B)
Commentary
- This rough-copy poem-draft, composed around 1873 (THJ, RWF), was found among Dickinson's papers after her death. Several sets of pin pricks (three sets on fragment 1, two sets on fragment 2) are visible on the manuscript, indicating that the two scraps have been pinned and unpinned more than once. The poem reappears, altered, in a (destroyed) fair-copy letter sent by Dickinson to Fanny and Louise Norcross also around 1873 (THJ, RWF); see Tr A 43a. One additional manuscript of the poem, carrying only the lines of the second stanza, is extant, though its present location is unknown; a photostat of the stanza is held by the Jones Library, Inc. For a related fragment, a trial beginning for A 462, see A 463 (about 1873 [THJ, RWF]).
  
  One editorial notation appears on A 462: top right: ?. The significance of the ? is not known.
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