Dickinson’s Poetry: ‘Because I could not stop for Death’

By Sibhéal McGarry

Emily Dickinson is unanimously credited as playing a prominent role in defining American poetry. She was an unconventional poet, using slant rhyme – a type of rhyme characterised by the final words of a line having similar consonant sounds. She would also use irregular capitalisation and poems would often be written without any titles provided.

Only ten of her poems would be published in her lifetime. After her death, her collection of poems would be discovered by her sister Lavinia and later posthumously published by two of her well known acquaintances, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd.

Undoubtedly, many of her poems and letters were defined by her fixation on death and immortality. It is surmised that her obsession with death was caused by the loss of family and/or friends early in her life.

‘Because I could not stop for Death’ is a thought-provoking poem believed to be written in 1963 by Dickinson, exploring the inevitability of death. Death is personified throughout the poem and is introduced in the first stanza. ‘He’ is presented the demure gentleman pausing the motion of the carriage for the narrator. It is somewhat unnerving this image of death playing the role of civility.
Death will exit the carriage and offer the narrator a proffered arm which the narrator will grasp as they ascend into the carriage together. This image conjures a
likeness to the aristocratic guise permeating that of the upper class, which is contradictory to the image of death. The simple noun of ‘Death’ connotes the eerie grim reaper with his long scythe and the cowl resting on his brow, promoting a faceless harbinger of death.

The carriage ride continues at a sluggish pace as they are said to pass school yards and fields. The landscape is slowly fading into one another as the narrator waits for their final destination. It creates a paradoxical idea of the longevity of death.

They later pass the ‘Setting Sun’ as the last of the light rays are waning. After the sun has set the narrator describes their gown as ‘only Gossamer’. This implies that they have realised that it is not enough to ward off the incoming chill. Gossamer is a sheer, filmy-like fabric that is delicate, suggesting that the veil between life and death is also thin. It appears that they suddenly realise that they are unprepared for death, building anxiety and existential dread.

The poem ends with the line ‘I first surmised the Horses’ Heads / Were toward Eternity-‘. In this line Dickinson alludes to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Their arrival is commonly seen as a bad omen, and they are believed to herald the end of the world. This simple allusion creates quite the crux of the meaning behind the poem. The universal acceptance of death for each individual comes
at different times. Although the narrator had their own unknown epiphany concerning death, it had no outward effect on the world but their own.

The capitalisation of Eternity presents yet another personified figure. The symbol of eternity is the ouroboros, which is a snake curled so that its head rests at the base of its tail. The final line ends with enjambment providing no clear ending, suggesting that it continues forever, or the cycle begins anew.