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
~Emily Dickinson
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –
What to say about this one? It’s perhaps the most Emily poem of them all. Death is courtly, measured, unhurried. The speaker seems not unhappy at the prospect of her own earthly demise. And the poem ends on “eternity,” on an open vowel.
Rather than belabor this one, I’m going to set next to it another on a similar subject, with a similar ending tactic, so they can chat. The open vowel on the subject of death and forever calls to mind Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” While Dickinson’s poem is vastly more personal, it seems they have more than a few things in common. I’ll let them talk it out.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
~Percy Bysshe Shelley
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
The Emily Project 