E-Text

Emily Dickinson's Collected Poems

Part Four: Time and Eternity 112. I felt a funeral in my brain

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.