Poems of Emily Dickinson, series 2 | Page 3

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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 tnem 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.
Emily Dickinson appears to have written her first poems in the winter
of 1862. In a letter to oone of the present Editors the April following,
she says, "I made no verse, but one or two, until this winter."
The handwriting was at first somewhat like the delicate, running Italian
hand of our elder gentlewomen; but as she advanced in breadth of
thought, it grew bolder and more abrupt, until in her latest years each
letter stood distinct and separate from its fellows. In most of her poems,
particularly the