I felt a funeral in my brain | I felt a funeral in my brain

I felt a funeral in my brain

Language: English

Our translations: CAT FRE GER GER ITA

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.

Note: a later edition removes the word "again" from stanza 3, line 3 and adds the following stanza to the end:

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

Composition:

Aaron Copland

Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson

Text Authorship:

by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems: Third Series, in 4. Time and Eternity, no. 30, first published 1896

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 16
Word count: 92