I Felt a Funeral in My Brain – Emily Dickinson | Sung Poem with Classic Paintings (AI Music)

“I felt a funeral in my brain, / And mourners, to and fro…” Emily Dickinson's haunting poem, sung as a slow dark-folk funeral march over Courbet's A Burial at Ornans, Friedrich's Sea of Ice, Munch, Redon, Böcklin, Van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhône and other dark, dreamlike paintings. This is the 1896 text, as first printed in Poems by Emily Dickinson, Third Series (edited by Mabel Loomis Todd), with its four stanzas. The fifth stanza found in later editions (“And then a Plank in Reason, broke”) is not included. I felt a funeral in my brain, And mourners, to and fro, Kept treading, treading, till it seemed That sense was breaking through. And when they all were seated, A service like a drum Kept beating, beating, till I thought My mind was going numb. And then I heard them lift a box, And creak across my soul With those same boots of lead, again. Then space began to toll As all the heavens were a bell, And Being but an ear, And I and silence some strange race, Wrecked, solitary, here. Chapters 0:00 Intro 0:18 Verse 1 – I felt a funeral in my brain 0:45 Verse 2 – And when they all were seated 1:04 Chorus – I felt a funeral in my brain 1:31 Verse 3 – And then I heard them lift a box 1:50 Verse 4 – As all the heavens were a bell 2:08 Chorus 2:40 Outro – Wrecked, solitary, here Paintings (in order of appearance) • Francis Danby – "Funeral Procession", c. 1848 (Yale Center for British Art) • Caspar David Friedrich – "The Cemetery" (Cemetery Entrance), 1825 (Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden) • Gustave Courbet – "A Burial at Ornans", 1849–50 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) • Edvard Munch – "Evening on Karl Johan Street", 1892 (KODE, Bergen) • Elihu Vedder – "The Lost Mind", 1864–65 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) • Emanuel de Witte – "Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church with a Gravedigger in the Choir", 1669 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) • Léon Spilliaert – "Vertigo", 1908 (Mu.ZEE, Ostend) • Albert Edelfelt – "Conveying a Child's Coffin", 1879 (Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki) • Edvard Munch – "Death in the Sickroom", 1893 (National Museum, Oslo) • Odilon Redon – "Closed Eyes", 1890 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) • Caspar David Friedrich – "Monastery Graveyard in the Snow", 1817–19 (formerly Nationalgalerie, Berlin; lost in 1945, archive colour photograph) • Jean-François Millet – "The Angelus", 1857–59 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) • Vincent van Gogh – "Starry Night Over the Rhône", 1888 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) • Odilon Redon – "Silence", c. 1911 (Museum of Modern Art, New York) • Petrus van der Velden – "The Dutch Funeral" (Burial in Winter on the Island of Marken), 1872 (Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand) • Arnold Böcklin – "Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle", 1872 (Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin) Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis – "Rex", 1909 (M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, Kaunas) • Albert Pinkham Ryder – "The Flying Dutchman", before 1887 (Smithsonian American Art Museum) • Caspar David Friedrich – "The Sea of Ice", 1823–24 (Hamburger Kunsthalle) • John Martin – "Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion", 1812 (Saint Louis Art Museum) • Vilhelm Hammershøi – "Open Doors (White Doors)", 1905 (The David Collection, Copenhagen) Poet portrait: Otis Allen Bullard – "The Dickinson Children" (detail: Emily Dickinson), c. 1840 (Houghton Library, Harvard University) The music was made with AI. The poem and the paintings are in the public domain; images via Wikimedia Commons. #EmilyDickinson #IFeltAFuneralInMyBrain #Poetry #SungPoetry #AIMusic