This rough-copy poem-draft, composed in the 1870s (Smith and Hart), possibly around 1877 (RWF), found its way into Susan Dickinson's papers at some point after Dickinson's death. For different versions of the provenance of this manuscript, see R. W. Franklin's introduction to The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Variorum edition. 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap P of Harvard University P, 1998) and Smith's and Hart's Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson (Ashfield, Mass.: Paris Press, 1998). The haphazard disposition of this rough-copy poem-draft across the paper makes the interpretation and representation of variant readings problematic; viewers are urged to consult the facsimile and the diplomatic transcription of the manuscript. For a related fragment, see A 509 / 510. In Poems (1998), R. W. Franklin indicates that the fragment carrying the lines "Yearns no more | for that Peninsula" was composed shortly before H 338, perhaps catalyzing the compositional process, but it may been composed after the rough-copy draft. Dickinson inscribed the fragment on quadrille stationery, and in a hand that exhibits at least some of the characteristics of her fair-copy hand.

One heavily overwritten and illegible notation is penciled on H 338 (upper left); the authorship and significance of the notation are not known.