Because I could not stop for Death,
\nHe kindly stopped for me;
\nThe carriage held but just ourselves
\nAnd Immortality.<\/p>\n
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
\nAnd I had put away
\nMy labor, and my leisure too,
\nFor his civility.<\/p>\n
We passed the school, where children strove
\nAt recess, in the ring;
\nWe passed the fields of gazing grain,
\nWe passed the setting sun.<\/p>\n
Or rather, he passed us;
\nThe dews grew quivering and chill,
\nFor only gossamer my gown,
\nMy tippet only tulle.<\/p>\n
We paused before a house that seemed
\nA swelling of the ground;
\nThe roof was scarcely visible,
\nThe cornice but a mound.<\/p>\n
Since then ’tis centuries, and yet each
\nFeels shorter than the day
\nI first surmised the horses’ heads
\nWere toward eternity.<\/p>\n
Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
Emily Dickinson lived a quiet secluded life and her large body of poetic work was not discovered until after her death, but is regarded as amongst the most influential in American poetry.<\/p>\n
‘Because I could not stop for Death’<\/em> is possibly the most celebrated of all Emily Dickinson’s poems. The version used here follows that used by by Thomas H. Johnson in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson<\/em> 1955, and Johnson wrote of Death, as conceived in this poem, as “one of the great characters of literature.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20586,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions\/20586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}