any of Emily Dickinson's letters are caskets of jewels. Not a shell, but contains its pearl. There are phrases that are poems in epitome; others are sufficiently expanded to take on rhyme and rhythm. Her thought clothed itself in the essential graces of poetry, simplicity and music. These for specimen: "A word is dead when it is said, some say, I say it just begins to live that day." ... "Could we see all we hope, or hear the whole we fear, told tranquil, like another tale, there would be madness near." ... "How strange that nature does not knock and yet does not intrude!"

Her poems must be seen whole in their sky, and must be touched to yield their lightning. Some of them are ragged-edged clouds, but hanging in an atmosphere and drifting one way -- toward God and eternity. Touch them and you get an electric shock. The recurrent themes are life, love, death, immortality; but especially the veiled majesty of death. Did any other peer so curiously, so insistently, into the unseen, with such a baffling sense of impotence and folly?

  At least to pray is left, is left,
      O Jesus! in the air
  I know not which thy chamber is --
      I'm knocking everywhere.

  Though stirrest earthquake in the south,
      And maelstrom in the sea;
  Say, Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
      Hast though no arm for me?

    ------------

  Death is a dialogue between
      The spirit and the dust,
  "Dissolve," says Death, The Spirit, "Sir,
      I have another trust."

  Death doubts it, argues from the ground.
      The spirit turns away,
  Just laying off, for evidence
      An overcoat of clay.

I would that this writer on the mysteries had possessed a more joyous temper and greater certitude; but she could rise no higher than her faith, being first of all, sincere. On the sweet, safe level of the grass, the plane of the low flying robin and bluebird, she is serene and poised. Of all

  The simple news that Nature told,
      With tender majesty

she is a delightful bearer; a voice that has tones of pure gladness. What abandon of joy in what an Englishman calls "A Woman's Drinking Song!" -- "I taste a liquor never brewed." If language could intoxicate, the second stanza were such a draught:

  Inebriate of air am I,
      And debauchee of dew,
  Reeling, through endless summer days,
      From inns of molten blue.

And how her mind plays holiday in these lines:

  He ate and drank the precious words,
  His spirit grew robust;
  He knew no more that he was poor,
  Nor that his frame was dust.
  He danced along the dingy days,
  And this bequest of wings
  Was but a book. What liberty
  A loosened spirit brings!

And her heart -- she fails herself to find a plummet for sounding its depths, though she tries in such lines as these:

  Alter? When the hills do.
      Falter? When the sun.
  Question if his glory
      Be the perfect one.
  Surfeit? When the daffodil
      Doth of the dew;
  Even as herself, O friend!
  I will of you.