A 855: etext transcription

This brief text, composed on a single leaf of stationery, appears to have turned back into a draft when Dickinson crossed out the misspelled word "annull" and wrote "discontinue -" in a rough-copy hand above it. The text inscribed on A 855 appears, in part, as a trace (text altered) in a fair-copy draft of a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (BPL Higg 106) composed in June 1878 (THJ, RWF). In this case the opening passage of the fragment—"God cannot | annull (discontinue -) himself -"—constitutes the trace; the closing passage—"This appalling | trust is at times | all that | remains -"—is not incorporated into the letter to Higginson or into any other extant composition, and Dickinson's final intentions toward the fragment remain unknown. It may be an early draft of the passage in the letter to Higginson or an autonomous pensée. The unorthodox final lines of A 855 may have been deliberately omitted from the final draft of the letter in order to preserve its consolatory tone.