2. The Epigraph and the Envoy

Like the title itself, the epigraph and the envoy of the Princess’s poem are intended to announce and sum up the essential message of the poem or collection of poems as a whole (as, indeed, of all her subsequent work): that there is no absolute barrier between the community and the individual who is joined to it by blood, or between the All and its particular manifestations, or between God and Man, or Life and Death – only constant change and becoming. The epigraph, from the Tales of Rabbi Na.