The Brain

Emily Dickinson

Teacher card

Published: 1890, in Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete
Length: 12 lines, 72 words, 1 word in 72 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 3–4. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: birthday
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

The brain is wider than the sky,For, put them side by side,The one the other will includeWith ease, and you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sea,For, hold them, blue to blue,The one the other will absorb,As sponges, buckets do.

The brain is just the weight of God,For, lift them, pound for pound,And they will differ, if they do,As syllable from sound.

Emily Dickinson (died 1886), Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete (1890), lines 7845–7858 of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for names in posy cardsin posy · 12 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
posy.popplepoetry.com/sources#di-brain

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/dickinson-brain · popplepoetry.com