To Susan Gilbert (Dickinson)            about 1854

     Sue - you can go or stay - There is but one alternative - We differ often lately, and this must be the last.
     You need not fear to leave me lest I should be alone, for I often part with things I fancy I have loved, - sometimes to the grave, and sometimes to an oblivion rather bitterer that death - thus my heart bleeds so frequently that I shant mind the hemorrhage, and I only add an agony to several previous ones, and at the end of day remark - a bubble burst!
     Such incidents would grieve me when I was but a child, and perhaps I could have wept when little feet hard by mine, stood still in the coffin, but eyes grow dry sometimes, and hearts get crisp and cinder, and had as lief burn.
     Sue - I have lived by this. It is the lingering emblem of the Heaven I once dreamed, and though if this is taken, I shall remain alone, and though in that last day, the Jesus Christ you love, remark he does not know me - there is a darker spirit will not disown it's child.
     Few have been given me, and if I love them so, that for idolatry, they are removed from me - I simply murmur gone, and the billow dies away into the boundless blue, and no one knows but me, that one went down today. We have walked very pleasantly - Perhaps this is the point at which our paths diverge - then pass on -singing Sue, and up the distant hill I journey on.

I have a Bird in spring
Which for myself doth sing -
The spring decoys.
And as the summer nears -
And as the Rose appears,
Robin is gone.

Yet do I not repine
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown -
Learneth beyond the sea
Melody new for me
And will return.

Fast in a safer hand
Held in a truer Land
Are mine -
And though they now depart,
Tell I my doubting heart
They're thine.

In a serener Bright,
In a more golden light
I see
Each little doubt and fear,
Each little discord here
Removed.

Then will I not repine,
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown
Shall in a distant tree
Bright melody for me
Return.

MANUSCRIPT: HCL (L 17)- Ink. Dated: Tuesday morning.
PUBLICATION: The letter is unpublished. The poem is in FF 181-182; Poems (1955) 7-8
     There is nothing in other letters to indicate a rift between the girls at this time. The draft of a letter (HCL-Dickinson collection) from Austin to Susan, 23 September 185i, alludes to some differences between the girls about which he refuses to take sides, but this letter is in the handwriting of 1854 - It is placed here to follow the emotional tone of the letter to Susan of late August, though the disagreement on spiritual matters that seems to lie behind it may have no connection with the feeling of neglect shown in the earlier one.