|
"There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter afternoons
-
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes
-"
***
Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a
discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness
-
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail -
Assent
- and you are sane -
Demur - you're straightway dangerous
-
And handled with a Chain -
***
My life closed twice before its close;
It yet
remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to
me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that
twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all
we need of hell
***
If I
can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in
vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one
pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest
again,
I shall not live in vain
Emily's
grandparents was Samuel Dickinson, a lawyer, who was one of
the principal founders of Amherst College. In 1830, his eldest
son Edward, also a lawyer, and Edward's wife, Emily Norcross
Dickinson, together with their young son Austin, moved into
the western half of the Homestead. Later that year, on
December 10, Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born. In 1833, a
second daughter, Lavinia, was born.
Only a few of her nearly 1800 poems
were published in her lifetime. She stayed fairly
isolated, wrote poetry, and never married. She was born
in the state of Massachusetts, the daughter of a respected
lawyer. She always lived in her father's house.
There really isn't much to tell about her, I don't
think. It is believed by some that her writing was
influenced by puritanical roots and the sing-song quality of
church hymnals.
The two
Dickinson daughters (Emily and Lavinia), who never married,
outlived their parents. After Emily's death in 1886, Lavinia
lived on at the Homestead until she died in
1899.
|