Because I Could Not Stop for DeathEmily Dickinson
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
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
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 –
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 –
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 –
This is one of Dickinson’s most iconic poems, first published posthumously in 1890. Her first editors titled it ‘The Chariot’ but, as with most of Dickinson’s poems, she didn’t give it a title, so later editors have referred to it by its first line.
The alternative version — in which Dickinson’s editors regularized the punctuation, omitted stanza 4, and made other “improvements”—is available here.
In this poem the speaker, we can assume the poet, explores her feelings about Death. She begins by portraying it as kindly, but by the end it is presented for what it is, cruel and terrifying.
The poem comprises six quatrains, that is four-lined stanzas. The rhyme scheme throughout is loosely ABCB, though many of the rhymes are consonant, for example ‘Ring’ and ‘Sun’ in stanza three. This has an unsettling effect on the reader, as appropriate to the subject. The metrical rhythm is in common or ballad meter, and can be readily set to music. This means that for each stanza the pattern is made up of iambic tetrameters (four metrical feet per line), alternating with iambic trimeters (three metrical feet per line). A iamb or metrical foot is one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable.
Language and Imagery
The voice is that of the speaker — presumably the poet — using the first person singular pronoun ‘I’. The tone is difficult to define and readers may vary in their interpretation — a mixture of resignation, dark humour, flippancy, fear.
The two dominant images are of the ‘Carriage’ which represents capitalized ‘Death’, and the ‘House’ which is a euphemism for the speaker’s grave.
One distinctive feature is the capitalization of the nouns, such as ‘Carriage’, ‘Day’ and ‘Eternity’. The effect is to give them significance beyond their eveyday meaning.
The punctuation is complex, the poem scattered with hyphens to suggest halting anxiety, creating casurae that break up the rhythm.
We can assume that it’s her own, as the poem is about the journey she makes after she dies, so it would make sense for her to see her own grave.