This poem-letter was sent to Susan Dickinson in the 1870s (Smith and Hart), possibly 1873 (RWF) or 1874 (THJ). For an earlier, variant fair-copy draft of the poem, see A 93-7 (about 1871 [THJ, RWF]); for a related fragment, see A 313 / 314 (about 1873 [RWF], about 1874 [THJ]). 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.