MANUSCRIPT: There are two, both written in 1878. The fair copy reproduced above is incorporated in a letter (BPL Higg 106) written to T.W. Higginson early in June 1878, some nine months after the death of his wife Mary Channing Higginson. The poem is introduced by the comment:

That those have immortality with whom we talked about it, makes it no more mighty - but perhaps more sudden -

Upon what britde Piers
Our Faith cloth daily tread -
No Bridge below cloth totter so
Yet - none hath such a Crowd-

It is as old as God -
Indeed -'twas built by him -
He sent his son to test the Plank
And he pronounced it firm -

I. brittle] fickle/ trif[l]ing   4. Yet] And

PUBLICATION: The letter to Higginson is in Letters (ed. 1894), 328; (ed. 1931), 310; also LL (1914), 307.