Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/133

Rh message. Perhaps she was too elemental, too close to the very basis of being, to belong to mere humanity.

It was on May 16, 1886, that her family gave her back to immortality with a strange relief, as of setting a winged thing free. At the simple funeral in the old house, Colonel Higginson read a poem of Emily Brontë's, the last words she ever wrote, prefacing it by saying:

"This poem on Immortality was a favorite of Emily Dickinson, who has just put it on—if she could ever have been said to have put it off." "No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven's glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

"0 God within my breast, Almighty, ever-present Deity! Life—that in me has rest, As I—undying Life—have power in thee!

"Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main.

"To waken doubt in one Holding so fast by thine infinity; So surely anchored on The steadfast rock of immortality.

"With wide-embracing love Thy spirit animates eternal years, Pervades, and broods above, Changes, sustains, creates, and rears.

"Though earth and man were gone, And suns and universes ceased to be,