Yvor Winters

Here you will find the Poem To Emily Dickinson of poet Yvor Winters

To Emily Dickinson

Dear Emily, my tears would burn your page, 
But for the fire-dry line that makes them burn? 
Burning my eyes, my fingers, while I turn 
Singly the words that crease my heart with age. 
If I could make some tortured pilgrimage 
Through words or Time. or the blank pain of Doom 
And kneel before you as you found your tomb, 
Then I might rise to face my heritage. 


Yours was an empty upland solitude 
Bleached to the powder of a dying name; 
The mind, lost in a word?s lost certitude 
That faded as the fading footsteps came 
To trace an epilogue to words grown odd 
In that hard argument which led to God.