Emily Dickinson and Her Usage of the Senses

Of the five major senses, the sense of hearing is stressed in poem 280. There are several examples of sound throughout the poem. As is often the case in poetry, one can hear the metrical textures best when the poem is read aloud.

In the first stanza, in line three, Dickinson states that the mourners "kept treading - treading --". The word "treading" contains two syllables, and if we were to think about it musically, two beats. This sound of two beats, a pause, and then two beats could remind the reader of a heartbeat. This would make perfect sense since this stanza is reflecting internally (in line one she states that she feels a funeral in her brain). The iambs, the stressed and the unstressed syllables, mimic the stressed and unstressed beats of the heart.

The second stanza, in lines two and three, Dickinson states "A Service, like a Drum -- kept beating - beating -- " This repetition of a two-syllable word is what links this stanza to stanza one. Again, the line contains two beats, a caesura, and then two more beats. It is still the same rhythm as a heartbeat but now the reader should also associate it with the heavy sound of a drum, thus giving the poem a heavier tone. This rhythmic repetitiveness almost seems to numb the speaker and reader alike.

It is in the third stanza that the reader gets a direct reference to the sense of hearing. "And then I heard them lift a Box..." the first line of the stanza states. The next line gives the reader an example of onomatopoeia, with the word creak "And then I heard them lift a Box and creak across my Soul".

The third stanza is rich with further examples of sound. In the first line of the stanza Dickinson likens the heavens to "a Bell", and then in the next line states that she is "but an Ear". She is isolated, waiting to hear a sound from the heavens that she is separated from. The reader learns in the next line "And I, and Silence, some strange Race wrecked, solitary, here" that the ringing of that bell apparently never comes.