English Literature

I have often wondered how lonely and depressed Emily must have been to come out with the poems she did. Death and sorrow are recurrent themes in her poems. In her poem “Because I could not stop for death”, she goes to the extent of glorifying death as a gentleman caller. In “I felt a funeral in my brain”, she speaks of death and from another point of view, insanity.

Any person, who has ever undergone a great tragedy and survived it, will immediately identify with the emotions running through the poem, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”. One doesn’t know what kind of “pain” she is referring to- it could be death of a loved one, it could be a broken relationship, it could be a dream not realised. The “great pain” is subjective. Pain is triggered off by different things in different people.  But the feelings that follow the pain are universal.

After the most intense wave of grief has come and gone, a strange feeling comes. We feel almost detached, “formal”. We start wondering if it was we that that felt the great pain. There is this feeling of numbness, which I feel the words “Nerves sit ceremonious”, “stiff Heart” describe. Nothing touches us. Life seems dry and everything is meaningless.

We just go about are routine mechanically. We don’t know what else to do, so we do whatever we are used to doing. “The Feet, mechanical, go round”. Note how different parts of anatomy are described, as if the person is no longer one whole. Yet, there is this “Contentment, like a stone”. We feel do not feel the real, happy “contentment”. We feel the “contentment” of a person who has no emotions left, as if the life has been squeezed dry out of us and what remains is a stone. The sorrow was so intense that no more tears are left to be shed and yet not smile will touch the lips.

This same numbness is reflected in the next stanza “the Hour of Lead”. We do not know if this numbness will ever pass. Will we ever go back to being happy? After the sorrow, we feel the chillness of solitude, then there is a lack of sensation and finally we just accept our fate, resign to it and then there is the “letting go”.

If you have been leading warm, content lives or are in a phase where everything seems bright and sunny this poem will have very little or no impact on you. In fact, it might make no sense. But if you have just suffered, take out this poem and read, every sentence, every word will bear meaning. Whenever I read this poem, I feel an immediate bonding with poet. I feel like reaching out and hugging the poor, lonely poet who could only find a good friend in her pen.