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.
Credits
Emily Dickinson was a 19th-century American poet whose compressed, unconventional verse was largely unpublished during her lifetime. "The Chariot" — also widely known by its first line, "Because I could not stop for Death" — is among her most celebrated poems, and its personification of Death as a civil companion remains one of the most quietly startling conceits in American literature.
