No autograph copy of this poem is known. The final four lines are identical in text with a discarded version of the final four liens in poem no. 1586, which survives in holograph. See the notes accompanying the somewhat later poems for a discussion of the texts.

PUBLICATION: Letters (ed. 1894), 342; (ed. 1931), 331; also LL (1924), 351, where it is incorporated in a letter to Maria Whitney, dated by Mrs. Todd "May, 1883?" The text derives from the published version.