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...

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…