I felt a Funeral in my Brain
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The famous hermit from Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) published only eight poems during her lifetime. Today her nearly 2,000
. . . MORE »By Emily Dickinson
I felt a Funeral in my Brain,
And Mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading — treading — till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through —
And when they all were seated,
A Service like a Drum —
Kept beating — beating — till I thought
My Mind was going numb —
And then I heard them lift a Box,
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again.
Then Space — began to toll
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being but an Ear,
And I and Silence some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here —
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down—
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing — then —
Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.