The Chariot

Emily Dickinson

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.

Death stops kindly for the speaker and they drive on together. This is the 1890 editors' text, titles and commas included.

Source: Emily Dickinson, Poems, ed. Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1890), titled "The Chariot" by its editors. Text: Project Gutenberg. Public domain in the US.

Public domain in the United States.