Part 16 (1/2)

That shall aurora be East of eternity;

One with the banner gay, One in the red array, -- That is the break of day.

x.x.xIX.

I shall know why, when time is over, And I have ceased to wonder why; Christ will explain each separate anguish In the fair schoolroom of the sky.

He will tell me what Peter promised, And I, for wonder at his woe, I shall forget the drop of anguish That scalds me now, that scalds me now.

XL.

I never lost as much but twice, And that was in the sod; Twice have I stood a beggar Before the door of G.o.d!

Angels, twice descending, Reimbursed my store.

Burglar, banker, father, I am poor once more!

POEMS

by EMILY d.i.c.kINSON

Second Series

Edited by two of her friends

MABEL LOOMIS TODD and T.W. HIGGINSON

PREFACE

The eagerness with which the first volume of Emily d.i.c.kinson's poems has been read shows very clearly that all our alleged modern artificiality does not prevent a prompt appreciation of the qualities of directness and simplicity in approaching the greatest themes,--life and love and death. That ”irresistible needle-touch,”

as one of her best critics has called it, piercing at once the very core of a thought, has found a response as wide and sympathetic as it has been unexpected even to those who knew best her compelling power. This second volume, while open to the same criticism as to form with its predecessor, shows also the same s.h.i.+ning beauties.

Although Emily d.i.c.kinson had been in the habit of sending occasional poems to friends and correspondents, the full extent of her writing was by no means imagined by them. Her friend ”H.H.”

must at least have suspected it, for in a letter dated 5th September, 1884, she wrote:--

MY DEAR FRIEND,-- What portfolios full of verses you must have! It is a cruel wrong to your ”day and generation” that you will not give them light.