Because I Could Not Stop

Emily Dickinson — Because I Could Not Stop for Death

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.

Emily Dickinson wrote this poem around 1863, though like almost all of her work it wasn't published until after her death, appearing in an 1890 collection. It imagines death not as violent or sudden but as a courteous carriage ride — one of the most studied openings in American poetry.