I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain

“The Brain—is wider than the Sky” by Emily Dickinson (1862)

“The Brain—is wider than the Sky” details the immense power of the mind. Not only is it larger than the sky but it’s “deeper than the sea” (Line 5) and equal to the “weight of God” (Line 9). The supreme authority Emily Dickinson attributes to the brain connects this poem to “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” and its recreation of an authentic experience of death.

“Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson (1863)

In this poem, death doesn’t come across as oppressive. There are no adversarial mourners or noxious sounds. Instead death is a “kindly” man who takes the speaker on an excursion to see the different stages that compose life. Just as “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” ends on a “then—” (Line 20), a hypothetical afterlife, “Because I could not stop for Death” also doesn’t give death the final say, as the speaker links themselves to immortality.

“Sonnet V: If I should learn, in some quite casual way” by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1917)

In this sonnet, the female speaker engages with death in an external, tangible way: On a train, the speaker learns from another passenger’s newspaper that a former lover died.