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xvi
There her ears caught those
"Drums off the phantom battlements."
There, ofttimes "among her mind" such glee possessed her she vows had she but ballet knowledge she would put herself abroad
"In pirouette to blanch a troupeOr lay a Prima mad."
Again her mental exercise took a colder shade, and she says:
"I tried to think a lonelier thingThan any I had seen,Some polar expiation,An omen in the boneOf Death's tremendous nearness."
It was there she became conscious in her chamber of a "Shapeless Friend." It was there she
"Opened wide her narrow handsTo gather Paradise."
IV
The love poems as given here form an almost unbroken narrative of Emily's own experience, from the first sight of the man she heard as a stranger preaching in Philadelphia, on through their mutual bewilderment, certainty, and renunciation.
Without a doubt their first recognition is recorded by her in an otherwise rather insignificant poem sent to her Sister Sue a little later:
