After great pain a formal feeling comes — (175)
After great pain a formal feeling comes —
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs ;
The stiff Heart questions — was it He that bore ?
And yesterday — or centuries before ?
The feet mechanical go round
A wooden way
Of ground or air or Ought,
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.
From The Further Poems of Emily Dickinson (Little, Brown, and Company, 1929), edited by Martha Dickinson Bianchi and Alfred Leete Hampson. This poem is in the public domain.