Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises

[251] envelope inclosed in the larger; and even this name was written — as if the shy writer wished to recede as far as possible from view --in pencil, not in ink. The name was Emily Dickinson. Inclosed with the letter were four poems, two of which have since been separately printed,--“Safe in their alabaster chambers” and “I'll tell you how the sun rose,” besides the two that here follow. The first comprises in its eight lines a truth so searching that it seems a condensed summary of the whole experience of a long life:--

We play at paste
Till qualified for pearl;
Then drop the paste
And deem ourself a fool.

The shapes, though, were similar
And our new hands
Learned gem-tactics,
Practicing sands.

Then came one which I have always classed among the most exquisite of her productions, with a singular felicity of phrase and an aerial lift that bears the ear upward with the bee it traces:--

The nearest dream recedes unrealized.
The heaven we chase,
Like the June bee