This fair-copy poem-draft was found among Dickinson's papers after her death. Though it was composed in 1871 (THJ, RWF), some years after she had ceased binding her work into manuscript volumes, the poem has been carefully copied and may constitute evidence that Dickinson continued, at least on occasion, to prepare manuscripts for binding in the 1870s. For another fair-copy version of this poem sent to Susan Dickinson, see H 307 (1870s [Smith and Hart]; about 1873 [RWF]; about 1874 [THJ]); for a related fragment, see A 313 / 314. In Poems (1998), R. W. Franklin hypothesizes that the fragment may have been composed between the first and second versions of the poem, since the second fair-copy (H 307) to Sue reflects the change of wording offered in the fragment. The definitive compositional history of the textual constellation, however, remains open to speculation.

Two editorial notations are penciled on A 93-7: upper right, SHGD?: 3; upper left, MTB: SH. The first notation probably indicates Susan Dickinson's ranking of the poem; the second notation indicates that the text—or a version of it—was published in The Single Hound (1914), 103.