INTRODUCTION
we do not deserve, in that confiding age when Duty ruled over Pleasure before the Puritan became a hypocrite.
Her aspect of Deity,—as her intimation,—was her own,—unique, peculiar, unimpaired by the brimstone theology of her day.
Her poems reflect this direct relation toward the great realities we have later avoided, covered up, or tried to wipe out; perhaps because were they really so great we become so small in consequence. All truth came to Emily straight from honor to honor unimpaired. She never trafficked with falsehood seriously, never employed a deception in thought or feeling of her own. This pitiless sincerity dictated:
Because I know it's true
Men do not sham convulsion
Nor simulate a throe."
As light after darkness, Summer following Winter, she is inevitable, unequivocal. Evasion of fact she knew not, though her body might flit away from interruption, leaving an intruder to "Think that a sunbeam left the door ajar."
Her entities were vast—as her words were few; those words like dry-point etching or frost upon the pane! Doubly aspected, every event, every object seemed to hold for her both its actual and imaginative dimension. By this power she carries her readers behind the veil obscuring less gifted apprehension. She even descends over the brink of the grave to toy with the outworn vesture of the spirit, recapture the dead smile on lips surrendered forever; then, as on the wings of Death, betakes
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