If I Should Cast Off This Tattered Coat

If I Should Cast Off This Tattered Coat - meaning Summary

Facing Mortality and the Unknown

The speaker imagines casting off a worn coat as a metaphor for dying or shedding earthly burdens and stepping into a vast, indifferent sky. Confronted with the possibility that the afterlife is an empty, echoless expanse, the voice asks a simple, uneasy question about meaning and consequence. The poem compresses existential doubt into a brief, direct image that leaves resolution deliberately unresolved.