After great pain, a formal feeling comes by Emily Dickinson
Analysis
"After great pain, a formal feeling comes" speaks of a great pain the poet feels and when the feeling began, whether it was recent or centuries before. The poet speaks of how even if she survives today, the feeling will still be there tomorrow.
This poem consists of just three stanzas. The first and third stanza are made up of four lines while the second contains five. Actually, the entire poem can easily be sectioned off into each individual stanza. For example, the first stanza consists of four iambic-pentameter lines. The second stanza consists of five lines without any discernable meters. The third contains a rhyming couplet of iambic-triameter and a rhyming couplet of iambic-pentameter. The first stanza contains the rhyme scheme AABB. The second ABCDD.
Johnson number: 341
Poem
After great pain, a formal feeling comes After great pain, a formal feeling comes The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Toombs The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore, And Yesterday, or Centuries before? The Feet, mechanical, go round Of Ground, or Air, or Ought A Wooden way Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone This is the Hour of Lead Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons recollect the Snow First-Chill-then Stupor-then the letting go
Next: Because I Could Not Stop for Death
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Nationality
American
Literary Movement
19th Century
Subjects
Pain