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Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

I felt a funeral in my brain


              1I felt a funeral in my brain,
              2    And mourners, to and fro,
              3Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
              4    That sense was breaking through.

              5And when they all were seated,
              6    A service like a drum
              7Kept beating, beating, till I thought
              8    My mind was going numb.

              9And then I heard them lift a box,
            10    And creak across my soul
            11With those same boots of lead, again.
            12    Then space began to toll

            13As all the heavens were a bell,
            14    And Being but an ear,
            15And I and silence some strange race,
            16    Wrecked, solitary, here.

Notes

16] The following stanza closes poem 280 in the existing manuscript version, The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin in volumes (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981: I, 341-42; fascicle 16; PS 1541 A1 1981 ROBA):

And then a plank in reason broke,
And I dropped down and down
And hit a world, at every plunge,
And finished knowing, then.


Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Poems (1890-1896) by Emily Dickinson: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Original Volumes Issued in 1890, 1891, and 1896, with an Introduction by George Monteiro (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars' Facsimiles).
First publication date: 1896
Publication date note: 1947 (last stanza).
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1997
Recent editing: 2:2002/5/31

Composition date: 1861
Form: abcb (off-rhyme)


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