Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/134

102 And Thou wert left alone, Every existence would exist in Thee!

"There is not room for Death, Nor atom that his might could render void; Thou—Thou art Being and Breath, And what Thou art may never be destroyed!"

On an improvised bier of pine boughs, entirely covered by a pall of blue sand-violets which fell so low it swept the grass on either side as they passed, she was borne in a soft white coffin by laborers, who had all worked upon her father's land and reverenced her almost as the Madonna, across the few intervening fields carpeted with the young summer flowers, followed only by those closest to her, to the old cemetery where her father and mother had preceded her. A singularly lovely and fitting ending of her visible journey into the mortal world.

In her own room stood the old mahogany bureau, filled with her friend's letters marked to be burned unread, and her own manuscript poems. Her sacred wishes were carried out by her family to the utmost—until they came to her own work. It seemed to them too much to ask of them to destroy this wealth of her inner genius, with its gift for the world of poets and kindred natures throughout all time. They knew that Emily Dickinson belonged not alone to them. And in rescuing her work from destruction to which she destined it in her naïve panic before impending discovery, they were sure their decision would have been justified even by her if she could have foreseen their meaning to later generations. Her sister Lavinia, her brother Austin, were the ones to decide—technically—but it was the Sister Sue who realized that there had been visions of her own continuing