Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/110

78 Can keep the soul alive— Not portly, mind! But breathing, warm, Conscious, as old Napoleon The night before the crown!

The resemblance of these first four lines to the now popular quatrain of Omar Khayyám is noteworthy, as Emily so far as can be proved never saw the translations of Fitzgerald, though they were published in England in 1858. Her Sister Sue never saw them until the Houghton Mifflin & Company American edition in 1888, two years after Emily's death; nor were they among her books.

She was always eager to respond to Susan's criticism, and when the first pencilled copy was sent over of the poem, "Safe in their alabaster chambers," it was returned with profound admiration, but this comment, "The second verse is not frosty enough yet." To which Emily replied next day:

The first variant was chosen, and so appears as a third stanza, in Volume One of the published poems. "In this Wondrous Sea" was sent to Susan in 1848 when she was