I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain

Due to the puzzling nature of the poem, the mourners can represent allies and an oppressive force.

The mourners keep “treading” (Line 3) in the speaker’s brain, and then they “creak” (Line 10) across the speaker’s soul with “Boots of Lead” (Line 11). The diction connects the mourners to oppression. Their treading movement and the metal footwear mark the mourners as captives—they march in unison, their feet bound. Written during the Industrial Revolution, this imagery recalls either the toil of factory workers whose repetitive steps power machinery, or the connected path of convicts, chained together with leg irons. The mourners are doomed to their repetitive march, whose rhythmic stomping recalls the speaker’s heartbeat—the relentless continuation of the unexamined life. Yet when the speaker breaks from the mourners, the speaker joins “Silence” (Line 15), and together, they find themselves “Wrecked” and “solitary” (Line 16). Their investigation into death has come with a deeply troubling price.

The mourners also symbolize guides. However antagonistically, they help the speaker envision the process of death, to experience “every plunge” (Line 19) of the mystery of nonexistence.