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]¹.
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 --

Available sung texts: ← What is this?

• A. Copland

A. Copland sets stanzas 1-4

About the headline (FAQ)

View original text (without footnotes)
¹ Copland: "lead, again"

Text Authorship:

by Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886), no title, appears in Poems by Emily Dickinson, first published 1896 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

by Ernst Bacon (1898 - 1990), "Treading", 196-? [sung text not yet checked]
by Aaron Copland (1900 - 1990), "I felt a funeral in my brain", 1949-50, stanzas 1-4 [ mezzo-soprano, piano ], from Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson, no. 9 [sung text checked 1 time]
by Michael M. Horvit (b. 1932), "I felt a funeral in my brain", published 1970 [ soprano and piano ], from Three Songs of Elegy [sung text not yet checked]

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: 20
Word count: 117