Emily Dickinson

All but Death can be

Exact repetition

The entire first stanza repeats word-for-word. Dickinson's manuscripts show this wasn't a printing error—she meant to double it.

ALL but Death can be
Adjusted;
Dynasties repaired,
Systems settled in their

Mechanical universe

Systems settled in their **Sockets**—like joints, gears, or electrical connections. Dickinson treats civilization as repairable machinery, not organic growth.

Sockets,

Time as removable

**Centuries removed**—not just passed, but taken out like bad parts. Even vast stretches of time can be undone or replaced.

Centuries removed,—
Wastes of lives resown

Agricultural resurrection

**Wastes of lives resown**—failed generations replanted like crops. Spring returns, life gets another chance. Death doesn't.

Agricultural resurrection

**Wastes of lives resown**—failed generations replanted like crops. Spring returns, life gets another chance. Death doesn't.

With colors
By superior springs,
Death—unto itself exception—
Is exempt from change.

Legal exemption

**Exempt from change**—legal term, like a tax exemption. Death alone gets excused from the universe's repair program.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Repair Manual

Dickinson's vocabulary here comes from mechanics and politics, not nature. Dynasties can be repaired (not healed or restored—repaired, like broken furniture). Systems get settled in their Sockets like prosthetic limbs or light bulbs screwed back in. She's imagining the universe as a vast machine where everything broken can be fixed—governments, timelines, wasted generations.

The exception is Death—unto itself exception. That phrase is doing two things: death is exceptional (unique, special) and also legally exempt (excused from the rules). It's the one thing that can't be adjusted, repaired, settled, removed, or resown. The mechanical universe has a warranty on everything except mortality.

The exact repetition of the entire first stanza isn't accidental. Dickinson's manuscripts confirm she wrote it twice. It's the poem practicing what it preaches—everything repeats, returns, gets another chance. Except death. The repetition makes the poem cyclical, seasonal, renewable. Death stays singular.

Dickinson's Engineering

Resown with colors / By superior springs—this is Dickinson's characteristic compression. Springs are both the season (capitalized like Spring) and mechanical coils (lowercase springs that bounce back). Superior means both "better" and "upper"—springs from above, divine springs, improved springs.

Notice what can be adjusted: Dynasties (political power), Systems (social order), Centuries (historical time), Wastes of lives (individual failures). The scale keeps zooming—from governments to cosmic time to single wasted lifetimes. All of it fixable. All of it renewable.

Dickinson wrote this around 1863, during the Civil War's bloodiest years. The poem reads like someone trying to believe that even this—even dynasties collapsing and wastes of lives—can be repaired. Everything but the deaths themselves.