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Emily Dickinson's Collected Poems

Part Four: Time and Eternity 27. Because I could not stop for Death

THE CHARIOT.


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.