In the Crescent above them--Worlds scoop their Arcs--
And Firmaments--row--
Diadems--drop--
And Doges--surrender--
Soundless as Dots,
On a Disc of Snow.
[Thomas Wentworth] Higginson, the radical, was a pious man. [Emily] Dickinson, the dormouse, was a heretic who dared to call the dead suckers, conned of their heaven. Her sweetness of tone makes it easy to miss her bleak audacity. She didn't, it seems, take much of Higginson's advice (which we can only infer from her replies--his half of the correspondence disappeared), except for his suggestion that she delay publishing. But, lost at an anguished crossroads, she needed a Virgil. He had once risked his life to rescue a fugitive slave, and she was, in her way, also a fugitive.
from The New Yorker: Her Own Society: A new reading of Emily Dickinson.
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