QuixoteSilhouetteFrom1800s - The Monday Morning Memo

“How far is it from here

To Emily Dickinson’s father’s house in America;

Think of her climbing a spiral stair

Up to the little cupola with its clear

Small panes, its room for one.

Like the dark house below, so full of eyes

In mirrors and of shut-in flies,

This chamber furnished only with the sun

Is she and she alone,

A mood to which she rises, in which she sees

Bird-choristers in all the trees

And a wild shining of the pure unknown

On Amherst…”

- Richard Wilbur, from his 1956 poem "Altitudes," which first describes an elaborate Italian cathedral dome, then recalls the spare cupola which Dickinson's father added to their house.

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