Emily Dickinson -- "Because I

Emily Dickinson -- "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" The speaker is in eternity. That is probably heaven, but the poet does not say. She's been gone for many years and a reader can presume that she is in a pleasant place in eternity because the dying for her was so easy. What is clear is the speaker is reflecting back on her life and on the day she died. It was apparently an easy death because the poet personifies "death" in the form of a "kindly" carriage driver.

As a meditation on death, Dickinson makes death sound like a lovely experience. "Because I could not stop for Death" she writes; perhaps the meaning there is that she did not want to die at that time, but her time was up and Death obliged her by coming to get her in a "kindly" way. The journey to her final demise seems far too comfortable to be real, but poetry is a condensed series of images and thoughts. The lines allow readers to let their imaginations run free with possibilities.

She lets readers know she was taken away on the "carriage"; that is perhaps a way of saying it was not a sudden, brutal death from an accident. But death came easy and comfortably for the poet. It might be that the poet died a slow death from a disease, and she knew she was fading away, hence the "kindly" driver of the carriage. Life was good for her and on this slow ride to eternity (with "Immortality" on board) the poet passes through remembrances of her childhood.

Everyone remembers recess during childhood. It was a wonderful few moments when the teacher let everyone out on the playground, and the fresh air and green grass made it a kind of heaven on earth. Children play games at recess, and the poet played a game "in the ring." When she passed the fields of "gazing grain" that would appear to be her mature years, her harvest of all the years she has put in on the Earth.

And so in just a few lines the poet has taken the reader from her childhood, to the autumn of her years, and on to eternity. The sun was setting and first she says she was passing by the sun but then, changes her tune and admits the sun is passing by the carriage. How could the sun pass by a carriage that is moving towards heaven? "Or rather, he passed us"; by personifying the sun this way the poet makes it seem like the carriage is moving very slowly.

When the sun sets she feels a chill because she is dressed only in a gossamer gown, but why is she in the thin gown? Earlier the reader had the impression that she was fully prepared for death and that it was seemingly comfortable for her. When she writes that "He knew no haste, and I had put away My labor, and my leisure too…" it would appear that dying was a fairly smooth process which would have given the poet time to think out what she would need.

But now she is quivering and chilly from the wetness of.