Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, December 10th in 1830. She spent much of her life in isolation away from the outside world. The main themes of most of her poems are death, immortality, and loneliness. She wrote 1,775 poems in her lifetime yet; only 7 were published during her lifetime. She died in Amherst in 1886.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
by Emily Dickinson


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 –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –

She is going through her own funeral and seeing who cares that she is really gone and what it is going to be like when she is gone.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/155