The poem describes how death can imbue small objects with significance. It discusses a perished creature that entreats the speaker tenderly, a woman's knitting and sewing that stopped when death made her thimble too heavy, and a book marked with a friend's pencil notes that are now obscured by the speaker's tears of remembrance since the friend's death. Death assigns meaning to small things by marking the final works of those now departed.

1. Death Sets A Thing By: Emily Dickinson Death sets a thing significant The eye had hurried by, Except a perished creature Entreat us tenderly

2. Death Sets A Thing By: Emily Dickinson To ponder little workmanships In crayon or in wool , With “This was last her fingers did," Industrious until

3. Death Sets A Thing By: Emily Dickinson The thimble weighed too heavy, The stitches stopped themselves, And then 't was put among the dust Upon the closet shelves.

4. Death Sets A Thing By: Emily Dickinson A book I have, a friend gave, Whose pencil, here and there, Had notched the place that pleased him,-- At rest his fingers are.

5. Death Sets A Thing By: Emily Dickinson Now, when I read, I read not, For interrupting tears Obliterate the etchings Too costly for repairs.