The 1st version of 94 lines is simpler, more private and sharply criticizes Hatton for calling himself Corydon and playing at phony pastorals. The poem refers to Anne's "safest private drawer" where she keeps her poems and poems others send to her. The second version, 105 lines, has more Thomsonian lines and is much softened so that it ends on a panegyric of Hatton and other members of the Haselwood Hatton and Finch groups, and their homes: Burleigh in Rutlandshire was home to Heneage's cousin, Daniel, and his wife, Ann Hatton Finch (who was a daughter of Christopher by his first wife, Cecilia Tufton). Both versions of the poem refer to happenings in London: verse comes as swiftly to [our] Anne Finch as Hatton's comments about "who went with you to the Park/Or at the Play-House."
In both versions she writes: "Whilst I who've been the Muses drudge/E're since that I cou'd write or judge . . ." She is much familiar with the poetic countryside of Virgil; this is described in the homiest of terms: "When I the Hampshire downs have trac't/And hear his woodenhutt was plac'd/Which Virgil might have call'd a shed." The problem is the 1st Viscount doesn't make an appropriate shepherd, though the poet admits she prefers lace to "rugg." She describes her drawer as a "cabinet of Indian wood/Which drops the gum call'd Dragons blood" and says she would not have "lent" the "lines" he sent "Its safest drawer."
Although Anne Finch can be found using Madame Deshouliers in 1707-9 ("The white mouses petition ..."), this present or extant first version of this poem has to have been written even later, let's say around 1712, because of the reference in it to Anna, William's young full sister. This Anna's mother was also Elizabeth Haselwood Hatton. This Anna was born 1698-9. The poem suggests Heneage was charmed by her when she was 7 and now that she is beginning to show the first signs of womanhood, a "Ripning bloom [which] Foretells what conquests are to come" (11-12). It was also after 1710 that the Earl of Nottingham resided in Burleigh.
The second version of the poem has a very different feel. It is far more "worked up" and uses poetic diction which looks forwardto her later epistle to Lady Hertford on her demanding a poem from Euseden ("To ... Frances countess of Hartford who engaged Mr Eusden to write upon a wood ... ", 1718, Annotated Chronology, No 256).
What we see here is a woman whose family mildly but not very admiringly tolerates her penchant for writing verse -- as long as her teasing remains within the bounds of admiring them. Anne's revision placates. The poem also becomes detached from the initial situation and becomes an object for Anne to play with, work up and revise in its own right. It's never finished properly because she does not imagine it will see the light of day in a public literary marketplace. We can see here that a great deal of her unhappiness came from stress from the people around her, how important Heneage Finch's support must've been, and how significant her getting a title and control of her own space so that she could move out to become a published poet.