Poem Commentaries: BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH by Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson’s poems deal with death again and again, and it is never quite the same in any poem. In “Because I could not stop for Death—,” we see death personified. He is not frightening, or even intimidating reaper, but rather a courteous and gentle guide, leading her to eternity. 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.

It is this kindness, this individual attention to her—it is emphasized in the first stanza that the carriage holds just the two of them, doubly so because of the internal rhyme in “held” and “ourselves”—that leads the speaker to so easily give up on her life and what it contained. This is explicitly stated, as it is “For His Civility” that she puts away her “labour” and her “leisure,” which is Dickinson using metonymy to represent another alliterative word—her life.

Indeed, the next stanza shows the life is not so great, as this quiet, slow carriage ride is contrasted with what she sees as they go. A school scene of children playing, which could be emotional, is instead only an example of the difficulty of life—although the children are playing “At Recess,” the verb she uses is “strove,” emphasizing the labours of existence. The use of anaphora with “We passed” also emphasizes the tiring repetitiveness of mundane routine.

The next stanza moves to present a more conventional vision of death—things become cold and more sinister, the speaker’s dress is not thick enough to warm or protect her. Yet it quickly becomes clear that though this part of death—the coldness, and the next stanza’s image of the grave as home—may not be ideal, it is worth it, for it leads to the final stanza, which ends with immortality. Additionally, the use of alliteration in this stanza that emphasizes the material trappings—“gossamer” “gown” and “tippet” “tulle”—makes the stanza as a whole less sinister.

That immorality is the goal is hinted at in the first stanza, where “Immortality” is the only other occupant of the carriage, yet it is only in the final stanza that we see that the speaker has obtained it. Time suddenly loses its meaning; hundreds of years feel no different than a day. Because time is gone, the speaker can still feel with relish that moment of realization, that death was not just death, but immortality, for she “surmised the Horses’ Heads/Were toward Eternity –.” By ending with  “Eternity –,” the poem itself enacts this eternity, trailing out into the infinite.