“Foundations”

Edith believed a poet’s work should contain “some definite philosophy or arrangement of the common facts of experience with laws that satisfy the spirit.” She tried to formulate such a philosophy in her unpublished “Foundations.” She first tells how her religious difficulties began when she was a child and how she later became drawn to the Oriental doctrine of transmigration of souls. In the second part, too long to transcribe here, she offers her tentative conclusions. This part is replaced by an unpublished poem growing from Edith’s developed thinking.