All Things will Die      Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing       Under my eye; Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing       Over the sky. One after another the white clouds are fleeting; Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating       Full merrily;    Yet all things must die. The stream will cease to flow; The wind will cease to blow; The clouds will cease to fleet; The heart will cease to beat;    For all things must die.       All things must die. Spring will come never more.       O, vanity! Death waits at the door. See! our friends are all forsaking The wine and the merrymaking. We are call’d–we must go. Laid low, very low, In the dark we must lie. The merry glees are still; The voice of the bird Shall no more be heard, Nor the wind on the hill.       O, misery! Hark! death is calling While I speak to ye, The jaw is falling, The red cheek paling, The strong limbs failing; Ice with the warm blood mixing; The eyeballs fixing. Nine times goes the passing bell: Ye merry souls, farewell.       The old earth       Had a birth,       As all men know,       Long ago. And the old earth must die. So let the warm winds range, And the blue wave beat the shore; For even and morn Ye will never see Thro’ eternity. All things were born. Ye will come never more, For all things must die.

Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.

Part Four: Time and Eternity

XXVII

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, 5

And I had put away

My labor, and my leisure too,

For his civility.

We passed the school where children played

At wrestling in a ring; 10

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed

A swelling of the ground;

The roof was scarcely visible, 15

The cornice but a mound.

Since then ’t is centuries; but each

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses’ heads

Were toward eternity. 20