This page has been validated.
viii
it is an Emily oppressed by the loss of perspective on her dear familiar, the foreseeing herself projected into a spacious prominence abhorrent to her.
The more she braves it out, as in the poem:
"If God would make a visitOr ever took a nap,So not to see us,—but they sayHimself a telescopePerennial beholds us,Myself would run awayFrom Him and Holy Ghost and All,—But there's the Judgment Day!"
the more she trembles beneath her little dimity apron lest after all "God turn and look at me." For being Puritan born and bent, the Judgment Day, though less imminent, was no less due than Cattle Show or Commencement.
In her outbreak over the injustice done to Moses:
"It always seemed to me a wrongTo that old Moses doneTo let him see the CanaanWithout the entering—"
and further on where she speaks of
"God's adroiter willAs boy should deal with lesser boy—"
she is not really calling her Creator a bully, she is only "Emily outraged" again, as when we ran to her with our childish tales of injustice.
