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Emily Dickinson's poems

In her own words

Because I could not stop for Death

Emily Dickinson · 1830-1886

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 hasteAnd I had put awayMy labor and my leisure too,For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children stroveAt Recess – in the Ring –We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –We passed the Setting Sun –
We paused before a House that seemedA Swelling of the Ground –The Roof was scarcely visible –The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yetFeels shorter than the DayI first surmised the Horses HeadsWere toward Eternity –

In her manuscript one more stanza stands between the third and the fourth shown here. We leave it out for now, along with the manuscript page it is written on, until we know when that stanza was first printed.

See it in her own handHoughton Library, Harvard, MS Am 1118.3, 165a

The poems here are transcribed from Dickinson's own manuscripts. They were first printed between 1862 and 1929 and are in the public domain. Her dashes, capital letters, and spellings are kept as she wrote them, so these read differently from the smoothed versions printed after her death. The manuscript images are reproduced courtesy of the libraries that hold them: the Boston Public Library (no known copyright restrictions), Amherst College Archives and Special Collections (free for non-commercial and educational use, with credit), and the Houghton Library at Harvard University, whose policy permits publishing images of its public-domain holdings and asks that the library be credited and told. The modern dash-faithful scholarly editions remain under copyright and are not used here.

Emily Dickinson's poems