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("Because I could not stop for Death-") (1890)

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     Because I could not stop for Death-
     He kindly stopped for me-
     The Carriage held but just Ourselves-
     And Immortality.

5     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 strove
10     At Recess-in the Ring-
     We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain-
     We passed the Setting Sun-

     Or rather-He passed Us-
     The Dews drew quivering and chill-
15     For only Gossamer, my Gown-
     My Tippet-only Tulle-

     We paused before a House that seemed
     A Swelling of the Ground-
     The Roof was scarcely visible-
20     The Cornice-in the Ground-
     Since then-'tis Centuries-and yet
     Feels shorter than the Day
     I first surmised the Horses' Heads
     Were toward Eternity-

Editor´s Comments

"Because I could not stop for death" is a poem about recognizing the necessity of dying, and some commentators argue that it also has a strongly erotic undercurrent. Death and sex: two powerful, disruptive subjects. But sometimes the best way to see what a poem has done with a very large topic is to start small -- to look at individual words. Quite often there seems to be a word, or maybe two or three, in a poem which simply couldn't be replaced. They give the poem its distinctive take on things. In the case of this poem, I would pick out that word "kindly," and maybe one other: "civility."

Those words are certainly appropriate to the tone of the poem, which is extremely reserved and polite. There's nothing ugly or aggressive about the way death comes to the speaker. And yet it is precisely that tone of polite civility that sets up the poem's most powerful moment, when the reality of what is going on begins to dawn on the speaker:

We passed the setting sun --

Or rather -- He passed Us --
The Dews drew quivering and chill --
For only Gossamer, my Gown --
My tippet -- only Tulle --

She hesitates, corrects herself, ... and then shivers. She says she feels the chill as evening comes on because her dress is thin. But is that only more civility? Should we imagine that the flimsiness of her clothing is only a sign of how vulnerable she really is? That perhaps civility is all that prevents her from feeling that too?

Text History

"Because I could not stop for death" exists in a manuscript of about 1863. When it was first printed, in Poems (1890), it was given the title "The Chariot," and there were a number of changes. Stanza 4 was omitted entirely; "played" was substituted for "strove" in line 9; "Their lessons scarcely done" for "At Recess- in the Ring- " in line 10; "but a mound" for "in the Ground" in line 20; and "but each" for "and yet" in line 21. Stanza 4 continued to be omitted in later editions of the poem.

Though Dickinson published only a dozen poems during her lifetime, her unusual methods of composition have influenced publication of her work ever since. Basically Dickinson constructed what are called "fasicles": that is, she drafted the poems on whatever paper was at hand, even the backs of envelopes, then later copied them onto pieces of folded, unlined paper, often adding alternatives for words about which she was still unsure. The sheets of paper were then arranged in a pile, and Dickinson would punch two holes on the left side and bind the pile together with string, thereby creating packets of sixteen pages containing twenty or more poems. Printed in Ralph Franklin's The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson (1981) exactly as Dickinson arranged them, these "fasicles" allow study of the poet's unconventional use of punctuation as well as her consideration of different words. Not surprisingly, the existence of the overlapping versions has made for both richer and more complicated textual scholarship on the works of Emily Dickinson.

Historical Considerations

Emily Dickinson's choice to retreat from public exposure to the intimate sphere of family and the private life of the mind has fascinated her readers in the twentieth century. The following image of Dickinson at fifteen seems typical of Dickinson's elusiveness, as it shows us a young woman participating in the popular nineteenth-century pastime of making shadow portraits, while at the same time offering little insight into the person casting the shadow.

Click here to see a silhouette of Emily Dickinson in 1845.

Emily Dickinson's writing was equally enigmatic. She loved riddles, and her poems, letters, brief notes, and aphorisms often seem to blend into a single genre. Consider the following statement about wisdom, in her own handwriting. Is it also about women's relation to wisdom?

Click here to see the manuscript of "Excuse these brown suggestions."

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