Emily Dickinson · 1890
Because I could not stop for Death
Emily Dickinson · 1890
Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility. We passed the school where children played, Their lessons scarcely done; We passed the fields of gazing grain, We passed the setting sun. We paused before a house that seemed A swelling of the ground; The roof was scarcely visible, The cornice but a mound. Since then 't is centuries; but each Feels shorter than the day I first surmised the horses' heads Were toward eternity.
Public domain in the UK and the US · serany.app
What Serany thinks about this poem
Background
Dickinson wrote it around 1863 and nobody saw it until after she died. The editors who first printed it named it 'The Chariot' and quietly left out a stanza.
Meaning
Death turns up like a courteous man with a carriage and takes her on a slow drive past everything she is leaving. By the end centuries have passed and they felt shorter than that single day.
Who's it for
Someone unhurried, who took things as they came and was never frightened of what was ahead.
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