MANUSCRIPTS: Three fair copies and the worksheet draft of this poem are known; a fourth, now lost, presumably sent to Mrs. Jackson, is discussed below.
Obtaining but our own extentTaken together the fourteen lines express a sequence of thought, from the completely fulfilled but soulless pebble to the limitless Christ who is only fulfilled in immortality. A second fair copy of the ten-line stanza (privately owned: Godchaux), identical in text, may have been sent to Sue. It is in the handwriting of 1881.
How happy is the little StoneAgain she left a space at the end of the poem, but this time added beneath it: "Heaven the Balm of a surly Technicality!" The thought seems to be a reflection on the Calvinist orthodoxy that only the "saved" get into heaven.
How happy is the little stoneOf the suggested changes, ED adopted only "glows." PUBLICATION: Poems (1891), 154, titled "Simplicity." In Letters (ed. 1894), 417, and in LL (1924), 348, it is printed as set forth in a letter to Thomas Niles, written in April 1882. The letter asks Niles to accept "a pebble" which ED says she thinks she had also sent to Helen Hunt Jackson. Though the letter survives, the poem said to be enclosed does not. In Letters (ed. 1931), 406, the poem is omitted from the letter to Niles. The letter to Higginson was first published (with the poem included), in Letters (ed. 1931), 317.
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