MANUSCRIPT: About 1865, in packet 90 (Bingham 61b). A second copy, now lost, was sent to the Norcross cousins; it appears to have been identical in text with the copy reproduced above.

PUBLICATION: The letter to the Norcross cousins is in Letters (ed. 1894), 254; (ed. 1931), 234; also LL (1924), 266. It is printed without stanza division and dated 1865. It is included in CP (1924), 235, and later collections, arranged as two quatrains. If the text in CP derived from a holograph copy, it must have been from yet a third, since the copy in packet 90 was not available to Mrs. Bianchi, and the copy to the Norcrosses had presumably been destroyed.