Epigram

This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me, –
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.

Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me!

And so we begin, with the epigram to the first section of her complete poems.

Dickinson’s “letter to the world”, like so many of her poems, was of the “letter never sent” variety. Though she wrote some 1,789 poems, only a few were published during her lifetime. “She was neither a professional poet nor an amateur; she was a private poet”, wrote R. P. Blackmur–an oddity, perhaps, in a culture that even in the 19th century was fast becoming one that valued celebrity and noteriety above all else.

This photo is available as a greeting card.