The funeral in the speaker’s brain is not a literal ceremony; rather, it sets the stage for the speaker’s philosophical examination of what it might feel like to be dead. To approach this cognitively challenging topic, the poem goes from concrete description to abstract imagery as the speaker considers how to imagine one’s consciousness being absent from the world.

Stanzas 1-3 are full of the specifics of actual funeral services. There are “Mourners” (Line 2), a tolling death bell, and a procession that takes “a Box” (Line 9) away over a squeaky wooden floor. The speaker’s first attempt to know death is thus quite literal, seeing the mind as a corpse about to be buried. However, this tactic fails because the speaker can never actually picture being absent from this micro world: The funeral takes place in the speaker’s brain, the floorboards become the speaker’s “Soul” (Line 10), and the sentience that the speaker is trying to imagine disappearing is thus instead wholly and pervasively present.

Thus stymied, the speaker suddenly has a revelation: No consciousness can ever be fully extinguished because all of creation functions as “an Ear” (Line 14) whose purpose is to listen as “Space—began to toll, / As all the Heavens were a Bell” (Lines 12-13).