Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/130

98 escaped, as a retiring sunbeam to its native sky, leaving mere chairs and tables on their certain spots in the drab pattern of the carpet left below.

as Carman puts it, like the wind of which he is speaking, she passed through the heroic convulsions of that country church, unharmed and undetained.

The thought persists, though put aside repeatedly, of her possible reincarnation. How else did those hanging gardens of Babylon in her nature get themselves implanted? Characteristics of Richelieu—craving for the sultry Orient—how came these in the nature of a New England Puritan, nun and worshipper, mystic and philosopher, woman and eternal child? How else account for her?

Both personal memory of countless hours with her, and the open-minded re-reading of her poems and family letters lead to the conclusion that awe summed up her attitude toward religion and love toward life. She could write, "To die before one fears to die may be a boon," yet in one hour her wondering conclusion could be swallowed up in the near joy of a little exquisite service for a dear one. To those with whom she lived and her brother's family, she was all loveliness, all glimmering whiteness, all spirit—an avenging angel with a fiery sword against whatever evil befell them. Christ with the lashing words of contempt for the money-changers was her true spiritual progenitor then, and at all times she belonged by face and mien to the sweet fields of Nazareth and Cana of Galilee as truly as to the Egypt of Cleopatra and the generations yet unborn.