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An epigraph attributed to Herman Melville names the riddle of death and asks it to solve us all.

Melville asks death to solve people, reversing the usual expectation that a person solves a riddle. He introduces mortality before the first poem.

An epigraph attributed to Herman Melville reads 'The Riddle of death, / so solve us all...', with the attribution set below.

The epigraph names death as the riddle that frames the book, and the trailing three dots leave the thought open. Its capitalized 'Riddle' echoes the collection title and prepares the reader for poems about mortality.