brilliant child. Emily idolized him from his birth and only after days of stricken silence recovered from the blow sufficiently to write his mother:
Dear Sue—
The vision of immortal life has been fulfilled. How simply at last the fathom comes! The passenger and not the sea surprises us. Gilbert rejoiced in secrets. His life was panting with them. With what a menace of light he cried, "Don't tell, Aunt Emily." My ascended playmate must instruct me now. Show us, prattling preceptor, but the way to thee! He knew no niggard moment. His life was full of boon. The playthings of the Dervish were not so wild as his. No crescent was this creature—he travelled from the full. Such soar, but never set. I see him in the star and meet his sweet velocity in everything that flies.
His life was like a bugle
That winds itself away:
His elegy an echo,
His requiem ecstasy.
Dawn and meridian in one, wherefore should he wait, wronged only of night, which he left for us? Pass to thy rendezvous of light pangless except for us who slowly ford the mystery which thou hast leapt across!
And during these years of increasing isolation it was to her work she turned for relief and renewal. She admitted she was besieged for poems, but held her peace, working because "it kept the awe away," though in other mood she confessed it "a bleak redeeming."
From the time of her father's death she never left the house, except to flit about the porch at dusk to water her frail plants—set just outside in summer—looking in her white dress like just another moth fluttering in the twilights. The red army blanket that was thrown down on the dewy grass to prevent her taking cold was the only bit of color associated with her, and the origin of the
