Dear Emily, my tears would burn your page, <br />But for the fire-dry line that makes them burn— <br />Burning my eyes, my fingers, while I turn <br />Singly the words that crease my heart with age. <br />If I could make some tortured pilgrimage <br />Through words or Time. or the blank pain of Doom <br />And kneel before you as you found your tomb, <br />Then I might rise to face my heritage. <br /> <br /> <br />Yours was an empty upland solitude <br />Bleached to the powder of a dying name; <br />The mind, lost in a word’s lost certitude <br />That faded as the fading footsteps came <br />To trace an epilogue to words grown odd <br />In that hard argument which led to God.<br /><br />Yvor Winters<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-emily-dickinson-4/
