MANUSCRIPTS: The fair copy reproduced above (H B 85) is incorporated in a letter that ED wrote to her nephew Ned in March 1877, while he was convalescing from an illness; she enclosed with it the first maple sugar of the season, and titled the poem "A Portrait of the Parish." The worksheet draft (Bingham 100-1) from which the fair copy derives suggests several alternative readings:

A Field of Stubble - lying sere
Beneath the second sun
It's toils to Brindled People tost
It's triumphs - to the Bin.

Accosted by a timid Bird
Irresolute of Alms -
Is often seen - but seldom felt
On our New England Farms -

3. toils] corn -
3. People] nations
3. tost] cast - / thrust
4. triumphs] Pumpkins to -
5] With usually a sober Bird - / [With] generally [a sober Bird -]
6] Revisiting for Alms -

PUBLICATION: FF (1932), 257-258 - the letter to Ned. Two words in the poem are altered:

3. Brindled] brindle
4. Triumphs] triumph