The speaker feels no fear when Death picks her up in his carriage, she just sees it as an act of kindness, as she was too busy to find time for him.

He is no frightening, or even intimidating, reaper, but rather a courteous and gentle guide, leading her to eternity. In “Because I could not stop for Death-,” we see death personified. Analysisĭickinson’s poems deal with death again and again, and it is never quite the same in any poem. It is not just any day that she compares it to, however-it is the very day of her death, when she saw “the Horses’ Heads” that were pulling her towards this eternity. The final stanza shows a glimpse of this immortality, made most clear in the first two lines, where she says that although it has been centuries since she has died, it feels no longer than a day. Yet they only “pause” at this house, because although it is ostensibly her home, it is really only a resting place as she travels to eternity. In this stanza, after the realization of her new place in the world, her death also becomes suddenly very physical, as “The Dews drew quivering and chill-,” and she explains that her dress is only gossamer, and her “Tippet,” a kind of cape usually made out of fur, is “only Tulle.”Īfter this moment of seeing the coldness of her death, the carriage pauses at her new “House.” The description of the house-“A Swelling of the Ground-“-makes it clear that this is no cottage, but instead a grave. Her place in the world shifts between this stanza and the next in the third stanza, “We passed the Setting Sun-,” but at the opening of the fourth stanza, she corrects this-“Or rather – He passed Us –“-because she has stopped being an active agent, and is only now a part of the landscape.

In the third stanza we see reminders of the world that the speaker is passing from, with children playing and fields of grain. This “civility” that Death exhibits in taking time out for her leads her to give up on those things that had made her so busy-“And I had put away/My labor and my leisure too”-so they can just enjoy this carriage ride (“We slowly drove – He knew no haste”).

In the opening stanza, the speaker is too busy for Death (“Because I could not stop for Death-“), so Death-“kindly”-takes the time to do what she cannot, and stops for her. In this poem, Dickinson’s speaker is communicating from beyond the grave, describing her journey with Death, personified, from life to afterlife.

S stop before completion