After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

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BY  EMIL Y DIC KI NS ON
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 –

Emily Dickinson And A Summary of

"After great pain, a formal feeling
comes"
"After great pain, a formal feeling comes" is a short poem on the subject of pain, one
of many Emily Dickinson wrote in 1862, an important year for the prolific, reclusive
poet.

Biographers point to a personal crisis around this time, perhaps related to a failed
love affair or an outbreak of severe anxiety, which led to increased loneliness for the
young woman from Amherst, Massachusetts.

Her interest in the American Civil war was also strong. She would have been aware
of the many locally raised soldiers killed in what for her was an 'oblique' struggle.

Little wonder that her poetic themes reflect the pain, despair and terror experienced
by others, and increasingly, by herself.
Her poetry explores these difficult themes with wit, irony and a unique ambiguity
created through use of mythological, biblical and universal symbols. Add to that vivid
imagery, all wrapped up in an erratic syntax, and there is the recipe for a unique form
of poetry.

It is claimed that the word pain occurs in 50 of her poems so there is no doubt that
she had a need to express the accumulative internal anguish through her verse.

The poem is typically short, starting with that formidable first line which seems to
demand an equally profound response from the lines that follow. Basically, the poem
seeks to express, through metaphor, image and figurative language, what it is for
someone to experience that all-numbing 'formal feeling.'

"After great pain, a formal feeling

comes"
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 -

Stanza By Stanza Analysis of After

Great Pain A Formal Feeling Comes
Stanza 1

After Great Pain is a poem that concentrates on mental anguish, grief and perhaps
sorrow. It explores internal pain whilst naming actual anatomical parts such as the
nerves, the feet and the heart.

Emily Dickinson wrote a great deal of this type of poetry, focusing on pain, sorrow,
grief, terror and death. Her sensitivity and shyness eventually resulted in a rather
reclusive lifestyle but she somehow managed to put all of her inner energies into her
poems. The pain of being alone undoubtedly fuelled her creativity.

This poem is her expression of hidden pain, the sort that hurts inside, a kind of pain
of the soul. It could be caused through death of a loved one, loss of a love, trauma,
empathy with those who are suffering needlessly.

The poem can be split into three:

 Stanza 1 - internal reaction to suffering and time (post trauma stress)

 Stanza 2 - physical reaction in nature (paralysis)
 Stanza 3 - unresolved ending (existential crisis)
The formal feeling in the first stanza is the key to what will follow: a bodily numbness
where the nerves are personified as they 'sit ceremonious' like formal people at a
service but here portrayed in a simile as Tombs, containers of the dead, cold and
heavy.

Whilst the nerves are likened to what might be biblical tombs, locked away in the
dark, the stiff heart is able to pose a strange, double edged question. Firstly, who is
the anonymous male, 'He'? Is it a reference to Christ and the cross (He that bore),
suggesting the idea of burden, of sins taken on board, of outrageous death, of
religious feeling being aligned with the formality.

And secondly, there is the confusion in time: 24 hours ago or hundreds of years
ago? The implication is that someone, the sufferer, isn't able to discern just who they
are; they have lost track of time and with it, their ability to identify with the here and
now.

Stanza 2 Analysis
In the first stanza the scene is set. The language points to this lack of true emotional
feeling - formal, ceremonious, Tombs, stiff, bore....words that are all aspects of
heavy coldness, of lack of warmth. Pain has numbed and puzzled.

The second stanza continues this idea of the body becoming rigid and inflexible,
without social purpose. Specifically, the feet, that part of the anatomy that carry the
weight, become 'mechanical' - an odd word to use - as if a human could become like
a clockwork toy, a robot, a zombie.

Note the line length altering to accommodate this strange notion. From the
pentameter of the first quatrain to the short dimeter, the wooden walking is a
symptom of inner pain manifesting, affecting the whole movement of this unfortunate
victim.
Yet perversely, ironically, there is a contentment - a settled expression - it is Quartz.
This line 9 is surely the odd one out for the use of Quartz, a crystal that is hard, inert
as stone.

This is strong imagery. The sense that this individual, whoever it may be, is gradually
seizing up, tightening inside, becoming cold and unfeeling, grows and grows in the
first two stanzas.

Stanza 3
Stanza 3 is a kind of conclusion to what has gone before. Note the opening line:

This is the Hour of Lead

As if all that has gone on previously has now led to this point in time, the heaviest
burden to bear so to speak, is here.

Lead is the heaviest of common metals; it is dull and difficult to work with, unless you
have a hammer and plenty of strength. It gives a feeling deadweight and numbness.

If it can be remembered (that is, if the person doesn't die in the meantime) it's a little
like when you're out in the freezing snow getting chilled, losing all sense of touch,
falling into a kind of deadly trance.

Note that last line, full of dashes, as if the person is out there slowly trudging through
the cold, hardly able to go on, until, in the end, they let go. In other words, they lose
all of their feeling.

Whether or not they die physically or psychically is up to the reader. The ending is
open, finished off with a dash. Perhaps Emily Dickinson wasn't too sure herself what
had happened to the unknown individual who experienced this formal feeling?

What is The Meter in After Great Pain?

"After great pain, a formal feeling comes" is a rhyming poem with 13 lines split into 3
stanzas of 4,5 and 4 lines respectively.

Meter (Metre in British English)

This poem has a varied rhythm to it, traditional lines with ten syllables (pentameter)
giving way to much shorter lines (dimeter) which suggests that there is an
unpredictable element at play. The reader has to adjust breath and focus, especially
in stanzas two and three.
Stanza two in particular is a mix of tetrameter, trimeter and dimeter, the syntax
bringing pause after pause with comma and dash, resulting in a stop-start rhythm, a
going nowhere.

Note the end of the poem reverts back to two ten syllable lines, but both are a little
odd: line 12 has a puzzling comma separating clauses, whilst the last line is chocked
full - of - dashes, forcing the reader to focus fully on each word.

A predominantly iambic rhythm gives the first stanza a familiar pace overall, even if a
trochee and spondee initiate proceedings:

After / great pain, / a for / mal feel / ing comes -

Many critics miss this unusual opening, simply stating that the whole poem follows a
traditional iambic meter. It most certainly does not. The stresses in the first three
words reflect the strong effects of the pain, after which things settle down.

 Note that, throughout the poem, different rhythms are set up through varying meter,
line length and syntax, including conventional punctuation such as commas, and,
typical of Emily Dickinson, her unusual preference for dashes.
Rhyme

This poem does have rhyme, both slant and full. Slant rhyme is associated with
near harmony, where sounds do not quite match, creating some dissonance. For
example: comes/Tombs, Lead/outlived.

Full rhyme brings some harmony into play, creating a tight bond, as in bore/before,
grown/stone, Snow/go.

Both types of rhyme are found in couplets (two lines), the slant at the beginning of
stanzas one and three, the full at the end of each stanza. You could say that the
slant rhymes signify unease or tension, whilst the full rhymes bring energies together
and form a solid base.

Metaphor and Simile

Metaphors substitute one thing for another, whilst similes compare. So for example
in stanza two, line 9 :

A Quartz contentment, like a stone -

Here the contentment is Quartz, that hard, shiny crystal mineral. And it is compared
to a stone, reinforcing the idea of hardness and cold stasis.