“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain…” (280) by Emily Dickinson
"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain…" (280)
Emily DickinsonI 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 tollAs 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 —
MARGINALIA
Found this at the library the other day. Wow.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson, published by Little, Brown and Company, 1960. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“This comprehensive and authoritative collection of all 1,775 poems by Emily Dickinson is an essential volume for all lovers of American literature.
Only eleven of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published prior to her death in 1886; the startling originality of her work doomed it to obscurity in her lifetime. Early posthumous published collections — some of them featuring liberally “edited” versions of the poems — did not fully and accurately represent Dickinson’s bold experiments in prosody, her tragic vision, and the range of her intellectual and emotional explorations. Not until the 1955 publication of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, a three-volume critical edition compiled by Thomas H. Johnson, were readers able for the first time to assess, understand, and appreciate the whole of Dickinson’s extraordinary poetic genius.
This book, a distillation of the three-volume Complete Poems, brings together the original texts of all 1,775 poems that Emily Dickinson wrote.
“With its chronological arrangement of the poems, this volume becomes more than just a collection; it is at the same time a poetic biography of the thoughts and feelings of a woman whose beauty was deep and lasting.” —San Francisco Chronicle” (Source)
ABOUT EMILY DICKINSON
Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, but only for one year. Dickinson’s poetry was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England. She was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. She died in Amherst in 1886. Upon her death, Dickinson’s family discovered forty handbound… (more)
Read more poems by Emily Dickinson • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
- Explore other works in pursuit of: descent • perception • madness • Or browse the index
- If this work resonates with you, please consider supporting the archive. Thank you for reading.
