No More Learning

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Etext scanned by Jim Tinsley <jtinsley@pobox. com>





POEMS

by EMILY DICKINSON

Series Two




Edited by two of her friends

MABEL LOOMIS TODD and T. W. HIGGINSON




PREFACE

The eagerness with which the first volume of Emily Dickinson'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 shining beauties.

Although Emily Dickinson 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.
If such a thing should happen as that I should outlive
you, I wish you would make me your literary legatee
and executor. Surely after you are what is called
"dead" you will be willing that the poor ghosts you
have left behind should be cheered and pleased by your
verses, will you not? You ought to be. I do not think
we have a right to withhold from the world a word or
a thought any more than a deed which might help a
single soul. . . .

Truly yours,

HELEN JACKSON.


The "portfolios" were found, shortly after Emily Dickinson's death,
by her sister and only surviving housemate. Most of the poems had
been carefully copied on sheets of note-paper, and tied in little
fascicules, each of six or eight sheets. While many of them bear
evidence of having been thrown off at white heat, still more had
received thoughtful revision. There is the frequent addition of
rather perplexing foot-notes, affording large choice of words and
phrases. And in the copies which she sent to friends, sometimes one
form, sometimes another, is found to have been used. Without
important exception, her friends have generously placed at the
disposal of the Editors any poems they had received from her; and
these have given the obvious advantage of comparison among several
renderings of the same verse.

To what further rigorous pruning her verses would have been
subjected had she published them herself, we cannot know. They
should be regarded in many cases as merely the first strong and
suggestive sketches of an artist, intended to be embodied at some
time in the finished picture.