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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley but severe homesickness led her to return home after one year....
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FURTHER READING
Poems About Funerals
"To Sleep I give my powers away" from In Memoriam
by Lord Alfred Tennyson
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
by Dylan Thomas
Bomb Crater Sky
by Lam Thi My Da
For the Union Dead
by Robert Lowell
Fugue of Death
by Paul Celan
In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae
O Captain! My Captain!
by Walt Whitman
Question
by May Swenson
What Came to Me
by Jane Kenyon
Related Prose
Groundbreaking Book: The Complete Poems 1850-1870 by Emily Dickinson (1960)
My Favorite Poet: Emily Dickinson
by Michael Ryan
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Because I could not stop for Death (712)  
by 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 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 – 



Poetry used by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Ralph W. Franklin ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
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