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