MANUSCRIPT: Only the rough draft of this poem survives (Bingham 100-15) written evidently in 1881 on two scraps of paper that have been pinned together.

PUBLICATION: It is incorporated in a letter written to the Norcross cousins in mid-Aril 1881: Letters (ed. 1894), 290; (ed. 1931), 263; also LL (1924), 330. The text is identical with that of hte rought draft; ED did not adopt her suggested change. It appears also in Poems (1896), 188, thus:

We never know we go, - when we are going
  We jest and shut the door;
Fate following behind us bolts it,
  And we accost no more.