I felt a funeral in my brain,
And when they all were seated,
And then I heard them lift a box,
As all the heavens were a bell,
Pain Has an Element
Pain has an element of blank;
It has no future but itself,
It Was Not Death
It was not death, for I stood up,
It was not frost, for on my flesh
And yet it tasted like them all;
As if my life were shaven
When everything that ticked has stopped,
But most like chaos,--stopless, cool,--
The Brain within Its Groove
The brain within its groove
One Need Not be A Chamber
One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
Far safer, of a midnight meeting
Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
XLIX.
We never know we go,--when we are going
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
Then space began to toll
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.
I felt siroccos crawl,--
And all the dead lie down;
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.
The figures I have seen
Set orderly, for burial,
Reminded me of mine,
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key;
And 't was like midnight, some,
And space stares, all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground.
Without a chance or spar,--
Or even a report of land
To justify despair.
Runs evenly and true;
But let a splinter swerve,
'T were easier for you
To put the water back
When floods have slit the hills,
And scooped a turnpike for themselves,
And blotted out the mills!
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.
The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one's own self encounter
In lonesome place.
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartment,
Be horror's least.
We jest and shut the door;
Fate following behind us bolts it,
And we accost no more.