All but Death, Can Be Adjusted

All but Death, Can Be Adjusted - context Summary

Written in 1863

Written in 1863 and published posthumously in 1929, this short lyric states plainly that almost everything human can be fixed, reordered, or renewed—dynasties, institutions, ruined lives—except death. Dickinson uses images of repair, settled systems, and springtime regrowth to show the commonplace recoverability of worldly things. Death stands alone as the single absolute, an "exception" exempt from change. The poem condenses her recurring meditation on mortality into a stark contrast between cultural or natural renewal and the irreversibility of dying.