Which 19th century American author wrote the poem about death, titled ‘A Long, Long Sleep’?

This short poem by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) is actually about death- but death is one of her most frequent themes. The ‘long, long sleep’ is the sleep of death, that is, death imagined as an unbroken slumber for centuries, where the sleeper doesn’t ‘once look up for noon.’

The first of two short stanzas begins: ‘A long, long sleep, a famous sleep / That makes no show for dawn / By stretch of limb or stir of lid, - - / An independent one.

Her second stanza tell the reader it will be a sleep that lasts for centuries but ends with a question, when she writes: ‘Was ever idleness like This? / Within a hut of stone / To bask the centuries away / Nor once look up for noon?

Dickinson was little-known during her life but has since become one of the most read American poet of the 19th century. She lived much of her life in isolation, considered an eccentric by locals. She was hesitate to meet and greet guests and in her later life it was known that she rarely left her bedroom. She never married and most friendships between her and others was dependent upon correspondence.

A prolific write of nearly 1,800 poems, many were edited significantly to fit conventional poetic rules. Her poems were unique, short, typically lacked titles and often used slant rhymes as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.

This poem and many others dealt with death and immortality, two reoccurring topics in letters to her friends.