English Class

Have you ever read a poem that spoke to you? The words seemed to describe your inner feelings and personal thoughts?
I read an Emily Dickinson poem for an English class that brought me back to a very specific time in my life. It was as if she could read my mind and felt the same way I did in that situation.
As my professor described the theme, symbolism, rhyme scheme, and rhythm, the poem started to lose some of its initial meaning to me.
Who’s to say which interpretation is correct? There is no way to know what Emily Dickinson was thinking when she wrote it, so who are we to analysis it?


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.