This rough-copy poem-draft, composed around 1879 (THJ, RWF) on the back of an envelope, was found among Dickinson's papers after her death. The envelope has been addressed, in brown ink, by Elizabeth Holland (?) to: Miss Emily Dickinson, | Amherst, | Mass.; it is postmarked Philadelphia, 24 Nov. (1876?). For a later, variant intermediate-copy draft of the poem, see A 516; for a related fragment, see A 515. The fragment may have been composed after the initial rough-copy draft and before the second, intermediate-copy draft, since the second version reflects at least one textual change introduced in the fragment.

One editorial notation is penciled on A 514: beside the last line, MTB: 102. The notation may refer to the number of the envelope in which Mabel Loomis Todd stored this unbound manuscript. In her "GUIDE to the use of the microfilm of THE EMILY DICKINSON MANUSCRIPTS" Millicent Todd Bingham notes that Mabel Loomis Todd affixed the numbers 80–98 to the envelopes containing fascicles or individual poems, while Bingham herself affixed all numbers greater than 98 to the remainder of the envelopes. Presumably, Bingham also penciled the notation "102" on the manuscript itself.