Emily Dickinson Embraces Death Because I Could

Emily Dickinson Embraces Death BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH He kindly stopped for me The Carriage held but just Ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove He knew no haste And I had put away My labor -- and my leisure too, For His Civility.

We passed the School where Children strove At Recess -- in the Ring We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain We passed the Setting Sun Or rather -- He passed Us- The Dews drew quivering and chill -- For only Gossamer, my Gown My Tippet -- only Tulle We paused before a House that seemed Swelling of the Ground The roof was scarcely visible -- The Cornice -- in the Ground Since then -- 'tis Centuries -- and yet Feels shorter than the Day first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity My first reaction to Emily Dickinson's poem "Because I could not stop for death," is admiration for the poetic form.

It is so perfect in it's rhythm and the way the words flow from beginning to end even through images are not immediately clear. I'm at once impressed because I can feel that huge ideas are packed into a small space. What is most obvious in the first reading is that the poem is about Death. Death is personified as the driver of a carriage. Death, or the unknown, is being transformed into familiar everyday life.

The poem reminds me of Robert Frost because he, too, is a deep thinker on big questions like death, feeling the need to balance the known and the unknown, to bring abstraction into reality, death into life. This poem reminds me of Frost's poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, with it's famous line, "And miles to go before I sleep." Like Frost, Dickinson lines are memorable and epigramatic. Her words sound like great truths or proverbs that we have heard a thousand times.

They resound with a sense of truth and completeness, and I wonder, why didn't anybody ever say it like this before. After the first reading as I begin to think about the poem more profoundly I see that Dickinson's imagery makes Death a lover. He is "kindly." The word "Ourselves," adds a sense of intimacy as I visualize the interior of the carriage.

He is a man of "civility," and manners who makes the female passenger forget both "labor" and "leisure." In Dickinson's time a drive in a carriage was one of the rituals of courtship. In her youth Emily most likely went on romantic drives with young gentlemen. Perhaps in this case, Immortality, who seems to be the third passenger in the carriage, is the chaperone, or the immortal soul that goes along everywhere with the body.

As the final line of the first stanza, "And Immortality," shorter and alone, helps to strengthen the sense of the second passenger. Another reaction I had was that the carriage might be a hearse carrying the dead woman out of the town, through the country to her grave. I felt a sense of awe at Dickinson's skill to be able to include so much in one image.

The carriage moves slowly either because it is leading a funeral procession or because Death is beyond earthly considerations of time, or because he's courting. If he's on a date, he's in no hurry, and wants as much time as he can get with his girl. The more I see, the more I admire Dickinson's economy.

Part of the wonder of the poem is how Dickinson combines the mystery of death with the reality of the motion of the carriage and the clip clop of the horses hooves which we can almost hear as they move along through the familiar countryside. Dickinson brings of mortality and immortality together in such an easy casual way, yet it is all very perfect and precise and seems like something she very much needs to do to bring these opposites into alignment.

In the first line of the second stanza, "slowly drove" and "knew no haste" serve to amplify the idea of the kindliness of the driver, as well as the intimacy which has already been suggested by "held just ourselves." In the fourth line, "For his civility" further characterizes the polite, kindly driver. At the same time, a constant moving forward, with only one pause, carries weighty implications concerning time, death, eternity. The third stanza with the "Children..

In the Ring." "Gazing Grain," and "Setting Sun" gives a sense of progressing through the cycles of life toward death. Generations of children play and grow old and die. Grain, a symbol of life, stares with the fixed eye of death, and day turns to night as life turns to death in the image of the setting sun. In the fourth stanza the passenger grows cold, as night and a chilly dew move in.

The mention of the thinness of the woman's gown and her light cape bring the concrete and the metaphysical together again as both night and death chill her body. Then they pass a grave, newly dug. Since they only pause, perhaps it is someone else's death this time, but the passenger knows her time is approaching. The final stanza ties the ideas of time as short and time as long and immortality and reality together as the "Horses' Heads" continue to move in the mind, always onward toward eternity.

The respect I feel for Dickinson's ingenuity in putting this all together so simply and so beautifully is unlimited. When I consider how Emily Dickinson felt when she wrote this poem, I imagine her dwelling on the idea of death. Perhaps someone she knew had died, maybe someone she loved very much, someone she hoped to meet in eternity. I can see thinking deeply, bringing together the known and the unknown. Trying to bring her own feelings of death into the reality of her everyday life.

She is familiar and casual with Death, wanting to bring Death down to earth, into terms she can understand, transposing it into a more familiar metaphor, an everyday.