The version of this poem used to create this study guide appears in: Dickinson, Emily. “Because I could not stop for Death — (479).” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47652/because-i-could-not-stop-for-death-479.

Note that parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“Because I could not stop for Death” is a 24-line lyric poem written by nineteenth-century American poet Emily Dickinson. Never published or even titled during her lifetime, the poem was included in the first posthumous edition of Dickinson’s works in 1890 under the title “The Chariot” with notable alterations made by the collection’s editors. The poem as Dickinson originally wrote it was first published in 1955, taking its title from the first line. As the title indicates, the poem is a meditation on the speaker’s passage into the afterlife, comparing it to a leisurely carriage ride through a country town at dusk. By turns soothing and sinister, “Because I could not stop for Death” raises questions about the desirability of eternal life.

The poem opens with the unnamed speaker, presumably a woman similar to Dickinson herself, recounting an encounter with Death, personified as a courteous gentleman caller. The speaker recalls riding in the carriage with Death past a school and a field as the sun sets and she grows colder. They stop at a tomb-like structure in the ground, and the poem ends with the speaker remarking that centuries have flown by since that fateful carriage ride.