"A Mystic akin only to Emerson." W. P. Dawson, the English critic, in his own anthology states without apology: "Among the American poets I have named two—Poe and Emily Dickinson." And it was another Englishman, Martin Armstrong, writing of her poetry in the London "Spectator" last January (1923), who concluded: "Mr. Conrad Aiken in his recent anthology of modern American poets calls Emily Dickinson's poetry 'perhaps the finest by a woman in the English language.' I quarrel only with his 'perhaps.'"
The essential difficulty in presenting a Life of Emily Dickinson has been enhanced by the sacred pact observed with her chosen few, that all letters should be burned after her death. This excludes exactly those which might have held together the frail external incidents of her days, which seem so scantily supplied to those
However the present volume may lift the veil, or presume to lead her shy reality into the light of mortal dawns again, Emily alone supplies the only clue to herself, the articles of her Faith—
The Soul's superior instants
Occur to Her alone,
When friend and earth's occasion
Have infinite withdrawn.
Or she, Herself, ascended
To too remote a height,
For lower recognition
Than Her Omnipotent.
This mortal abolition
Is seldom, but as fair
As Apparition—subject
To autocratic air.
Eternity's disclosure
To favorites, a few,
Of the Colossal substance
Of immortality.
