Because I Could Not Stop For Death

bleachededen · Sat Mar 20, 2010 3:10 am

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 played
At wrestling in a ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then ’t is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

-Emily Dickinson

I'm looking to discuss this poem in fairly close detail. Anyone is welcome and encouraged to respond.

I'll start my examination/analysis/discussion of the poem tomorrow. Feel free to post whatever you'd like to say before then, if need be.

Please join me.

GaryG48 · Sat Mar 20, 2010 5:44 am

bleachededen,

I am looking forward to your analysis. This is one of the few poems I have read closely.

bleachededen · Sat Mar 20, 2010 5:50 am

Oh no, I fear I may have caused some expectation that I'm going to write an analysis that will blow everyone away...and I don't think I can live up to the challenge! :blush:

But I will do my best, and I really do want other interpretations, moreso than I want to interpret it myself. The one major thing I miss about college is the discussion of poetry and literature. It's one thing for me to find something in a poem, but it enhances the experience greatly to hear what other people have to say, too. I am glad you're happy to hear my thoughts, as that is always a good thing to hear. I hope my analysis/reading of the poem will live up to expectations and stir up debate.

Robert Tulip · Sat Mar 20, 2010 5:51 am

This poem provides an image of eternal life as immortality after death. It opens a vision of the relativity of time in terms of concern, with the moment of realisation of eternal life presented as feeling longer than the slow passing centuries of endurance of perpetuality. The theme is the subjectivity of time in the framework of mortality. It evokes the idea of time standing still at the moment of truth.

bleachededen · Sat Mar 20, 2010 6:28 am

Ok, here it is.

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 played
At wrestling in a ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then ’t is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

I’ll start with the first line and make my way down, but first I think I’ll give a general idea of how I see this poem.

It seems to me that someone she knows has died, and in her way of mourning, she imagines what it must be like to die, or in this case, to be taken by Death. Also, once again knowledge of her reclusive background and the often morbid tone of her poems comes into play, as it is clear from the details and understanding of death, to an extent, that this is a subject she has put a lot of thought into. Although it would be easy to do so, I do not see this poem as being suicidal in any way. To me it reads more like an acceptance of the inevitable, that we all will die.

Now onto the first stanza.
I love the opening line, which, because her poems are not titled, is used in indexes in place of the title. This is perfectly fitting in my opinion, because the first line sums up the entire poem, and the idea of death itself. “Because I could not stop for Death”, is beautiful in its simplicity and truth: We do not stop for death. We die when it is our time to die and not before. But she does more than express this, she personifies Death, and gives him an almost merciful persona (“he kindly stopped for me”), as if Death taking her is an act of kindness on his part, not menacing, as though he was doing her a favor by taking her because she doesn’t have time to die on her own. “The carriage held but just ourselves and Immortality” shows that no one else was taken with her, she died alone, and all that is there between her and Death is Immortality, which, if Death were to have a persona, as he does here, he would be immortal, as in ever-present and without end. There will never not be Death.

“We slowly drove, he knew no haste” makes perfect sense: Death would not be in a hurry, as he is immortal (as we established in stanza 1) and his companion whom he has just claimed has no pressing appointments, either. Death takes his time in bringing the dead to their destination. “And I had put away, my labor, and my leisure, too, for his civility” says to me that she has left behind her earthly ties, both work and pleasure, without fighting not necessarily because Death was civil, but because she understood that it was her time to die and accepted her fate instead of fighting it, and Death’s “civility” only acts to comfort her as she is taken away from life.

The third stanza shows what she sees as they “pass” these things, but I think this stanza, in more realistic terms, describes the images and memories the speaker sees as she is dying. I don’t see this stanza taken literally, but I think it serves to show that life on earth continues even as she is leaving it, passing the setting sun and onward into the poetic realm of death.

The fourth stanza is, I believe, describing her grave. “We passed before a house that seemed a swelling of the ground” is clearly the freshly dug and covered grave, the scarcely visible roof is the tombstone. She does not recognize it as her grave, her final resting place, but still acknowledges it as a house, nonetheless.

The last stanza is loaded with meaning and subtleties even I’m probably missing. Here she is saying that she is in eternity, wherever that may be, and that although hundreds of years have gone by since the carriage ride of the first four stanzas, centuries of being dead can’t compare to the seeming length of the moment she first realized she was truly dead, that the carriage ride really lead to forever.

Since then ’t is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

I also think it could be argued that the carriage ride is forever, and that is her eternity.

Please tell me what you think of my reading and feel free to share your own, even if your ideas differ from mine. I want, most of all, to hear other people’s thoughts on this poem (my favorite of Dickinson’s).

bleachededen · Sat Mar 20, 2010 6:30 am


	Robert Tulip wrote: This poem provides an image of eternal life as immortality after death. It opens a vision of the relativity of time in terms of concern, with the moment of realisation of eternal life presented as feeling longer than the slow passing centuries of endurance of perpetuality. The theme is the subjectivity of time in the framework of mortality. It evokes the idea of time standing still at the moment of truth.

Damn, I had to follow that, and I definitely don't think I came close. Thank you for your insight, Robert. As always, it is spot on and wonderfully enlightening. I do find this poem quite beautiful.

Interbane · Sat Mar 20, 2010 9:01 am


	Quote: The last stanza is loaded with meaning and subtleties even I’m probably missing.

What makes you think you don't know the poem better than the author? I remember reading somewhere a few interviews with artists and writers who were amazed how deeply into their works other people looked. The truth was, they intentionally crafted only a few things in and the rest was just for image. Yet, 'the rest' was found by audiences to hold as much meaning as the crafted stuff. Perhaps the horses pointing towards eternity was nothing more than a Stephen Kingish cosmological obscurity. It gives the 'impression' of hidden meaning to make the story more powerful, but does not contain any.

Or there's meaning, but you need to know the author a bit to figure it out.

bleachededen · Sat Mar 20, 2010 3:06 pm

Interbane wrote:


	Quote: The last stanza is loaded with meaning and subtleties even I’m probably missing.

What makes you think you don't know the poem better than the author? I remember reading somewhere a few interviews with artists and writers who were amazed how deeply into their works other people looked. The truth was, they intentionally crafted only a few things in and the rest was just for image. Yet, 'the rest' was found by audiences to hold as much meaning as the crafted stuff. Perhaps the horses pointing towards eternity was nothing more than a Stephen Kingish cosmological obscurity. It gives the 'impression' of hidden meaning to make the story more powerful, but does not contain any.

Or there's meaning, but you need to know the author a bit to figure it out.

I do appreciate that objective readers often find more meaning in poems than the author intended, but because I don't know how my reading will be received on this forum, I was trying to make a few disclaimers because I don't want anyone to think I am any kind of real authority on poetry and if I have a read that someone finds ridiculous, I want it to be known that I am open to other views and am not necessarily married to my own opinions.

It's probably my low self-esteem that makes me think that anyone would consider me unworthy of giving a good interpretation, and because you pointed out that just because I'm not the author doesn't mean I can't read meaning that they didn't intend, I will be more confident in my analyses from now on.

Thanks for responding.

GaryG48 · Sat Mar 20, 2010 4:31 pm

I think there are several versions of this poem. One version has an additional stanza. When it is included it is the fourth:

Or rather he passed us [he = the sun]
The Dews draw quivering and chill
For only Gossamer my Gown
My Tippet only Tulle.

This stanza is three feet, four feet, four feet, three feet while all the other stanza are four feet, three feet, four feet, three feet. It also adds the "coldness of death" image to the poem which is otherwise "warm" to the idea of death. As we grow older, do we pass the sun (as we pass through the stages of life) or does the sun pass us? I guess it depends on which version of the poem we read. The version posted here, without the missing stanza, is happier.

Robert Tulip · Sat Mar 20, 2010 7:10 pm

bleachededen wrote:


	Robert Tulip wrote: This poem provides an image of eternal life as immortality after death. It opens a vision of the relativity of time in terms of concern, with the moment of realisation of eternal life presented as feeling longer than the slow passing centuries of endurance of perpetuality. The theme is the subjectivity of time in the framework of mortality. It evokes the idea of time standing still at the moment of truth.

Damn, I had to follow that, and I definitely don't think I came close. Thank you for your insight, Robert. As always, it is spot on and wonderfully enlightening. I do find this poem quite beautiful.

Thanks Bleachededen, you got me thinking more about this poem. Christianity and Judaism have ideas of eternal life which involve the immortality of the individual soul after death. I find this traditional approach to the meaning of eternal life very problematic. Jesus said 'believe in me and you will have eternal life'. The "individual soul immortality" version of this idea is that if you believe correct doctrine you will go to heaven after death, for ever. Another, more cyclic, way to read this eternal life idea is that moral values such as justice, truth, love, good, beauty, have a permanent reality in the universe, and as we come to understand them we participate in the eternal truths that surround our temporal lives. Emily Dickinson, especially with the added verse (thanks Gary), contrasts a cyclic vision, with the sun passing us as living and dying natural organisms gowned by gossamer, with the linear shock of the moment of realisation that eternity continues forever into the future. How the soul may participate in the future suggests two visions, one as a discrete spiritual entity or individual soul, the other as folded back in to the emergence of new life.

My mother loves Emily Dickinson, but I have not read her poems before.

bleachededen · Sat Mar 20, 2010 7:23 pm


	GaryG48 wrote: I think there are several versions of this poem. One version has an additional stanza. When it is included it is the fourth: Or rather he passed us [he = the sun] The Dews draw quivering and chill For only Gossamer my Gown My Tippet only Tulle. This stanza is three feet, four feet, four feet, three feet while all the other stanza are four feet, three feet, four feet, three feet. It also adds the "coldness of death" image to the poem which is otherwise "warm" to the idea of death. As we grow older, do we pass the sun (as we pass through the stages of life) or does the sun pass us? I guess it depends on which version of the poem we read. The version posted here, without the missing stanza, is happier.

I can't believe I missed this stanza! I knew it felt like something was missing.
The version I originally read and came to love included the stanza that I accidentally left out. Instead of checking for accuracy, I copied the first version of the poem I saw (from Bartleby.com) without checking a different site for any differences or mistakes. For that, I apologize, because you're right, the poem takes on a completely different meaning, overall, once this stanza is added back in.

Please continue to analyze the poem with the missing stanza back in its rightful place:

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 played
At wrestling in a ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather he passed us
The Dews draw quivering and chill
For only Gossamer my Gown
My Tippet only Tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then ’t is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

Robert Tulip · Sat Mar 20, 2010 7:51 pm


	bleachededen wrote: We passed the setting sun. Or rather he passed us

Deletion of the stanza which ties the vision to the natural order looks like the sort of censorship that Christians have been renowned for, deleting any reference they could find which would indicate that eternity is found within nature.

bleachededen · Sat Mar 20, 2010 8:52 pm

Robert Tulip wrote:


	bleachededen wrote: We passed the setting sun. Or rather he passed us

Deletion of the stanza which ties the vision to the natural order looks like the sort of censorship that Christians have been renowned for, deleting any reference they could find which would indicate that eternity is found within nature.

That's an interesting correlation, Robert, although I certainly didn't use the censored version intentionally. I wasn't aware there were two separate versions, and it's been so long since I looked at the poem instead of just reciting the first two stanzas from memory that I didn't notice my mistake until Gary graciously pointed it out to me.

I agree that the lack of this stanza makes the idea of death and eternity seem much more "rosy," that the speaker is perfectly fine with being taken. The missing stanza adds the sense that while she understands that this is necessary, she is not completely comfortable with it and has not yet accepted it: her clothes are not enough to shield her from the cold, just as no belief can save her from death and an eternity not of Heaven, but of nothing. This changes the interpretation of the last stanza, as well, because while it still shows that no matter how much time passes, no time seems longer than the moment that she realized there was no going back, it has a darker feel with this added stanza, because even in eternity, she still finds the initial moment of realization to be the most painful, and one she remembers over and over for eternity.

It is interesting to think that this poem was intentionally censored by someone who clearly understood the meaning of the poem in an attempt to make her seem more accepting of death and possibly religion than she may have been. It saddens me to think that someone with a mind for interpreting poetry would manipulate it against the writer's wishes in an attempt to make the poem mean something else. I'd like to think that people who understand poetry accept the poetry (as we may accept art) because of its beauty, even if they don't agree with the message, because who has the right to do that, anyway?

I don't know for certain if it was a deliberate omission or a mistake, I would have to look into that, or perhaps we could ask Saffron, as I believe she knows quite a bit about Dickinson.

Again, thank you, Robert, for your insight. I always learn so much from you.

Robert Tulip · Sun Mar 21, 2010 2:07 am


	bleachededen wrote: I certainly didn't use the censored version intentionally. I wasn't aware there were two separate versions, and it's been so long since I looked at the poem instead of just reciting the first two stanzas from memory that I didn't notice my mistake until Gary graciously pointed it out to me.

You had mentioned that you just found it on the internet. This verse about the sun ties the poem together to indicate the uncertainty around death. My reading is that the censorious mind demands certainty, even if the certainty is 100% wrong. There is a pagan element in the verse about the sun, suggesting humans are primarily natural rather than spiritual beings, or at least that spirit emerges from nature. This idea is repugnant to dogmatic faith, which insists on an impossible miraculous story because confronting natural truth is too hard.


	Quote: I agree that the lack of this stanza makes the idea of death and eternity seem much more "rosy," that the speaker is perfectly fine with being taken. The missing stanza adds the sense that while she understands that this is necessary, she is not completely comfortable with it and has not yet accepted it: her clothes are not enough to shield her from the cold, just as no belief can save her from death and an eternity not of Heaven, but of nothing. This changes the interpretation of the last stanza, as well, because while it still shows that no matter how much time passes, no time seems longer than the moment that she realized there was no going back, it has a darker feel with this added stanza, because even in eternity, she still finds the initial moment of realization to be the most painful, and one she remembers over and over for eternity.

I didn't see it as rosy, rather that the shock of facing immortality presented a vista of endless boredom. It seems rosier to me to imagine our energy returning to the earth to be expressed again in a different future natural incarnation.


	Quote: It is interesting to think that this poem was intentionally censored by someone who clearly understood the meaning of the poem in an attempt to make her seem more accepting of death and possibly religion than she may have been. It saddens me to think that someone with a mind for interpreting poetry would manipulate it against the writer's wishes in an attempt to make the poem mean something else. I'd like to think that people who understand poetry accept the poetry (as we may accept art) because of its beauty, even if they don't agree with the message, because who has the right to do that, anyway? I don't know for certain if it was a deliberate omission or a mistake, I would have to look into that, or perhaps we could ask Saffron, as I believe she knows quite a bit about Dickinson. Again, thank you, Robert, for your insight. I always learn so much from you.

Such censorship was rife throughout Christian history. The sun verse would be regarded by pious faithful as uncomfortably resembling magic and witchcraft, and so unsuitable for readers who were steeped in belief in the transcendental Christian dogma of personal salvation.

GaryG48 · Sun Mar 21, 2010 8:10 am

bleachededen wrote:


	GaryG48 wrote: I think there are several versions of this poem. One version has an additional stanza. When it is included it is the fourth: This stanza is three feet, four feet, four feet, three feet while all the other stanza are four feet, three feet, four feet, three feet. It also adds the "coldness of death" image to the poem which is otherwise "warm" to the idea of death. As we grow older, do we pass the sun (as we pass through the stages of life) or does the sun pass us? I guess it depends on which version of the poem we read. The version posted here, without the missing stanza, is happier.

I can't believe I missed this stanza! I knew it felt like something was missing.
The version I originally read and came to love included the stanza that I accidentally left out. Instead of checking for accuracy, I copied the first version of the poem I saw (from Bartleby.com) without checking a different site for any differences or mistakes. For that, I apologize

bleachededen please don't apologize. The version you used may be as legitimate, or even more legitimate, than the six stanza version. I hope someone can tell us if Dickinson had a preference. I also find the six stanza version more interesting because the fourth stanza does significantly change the last stanza. Including both versions demonstrates part of the magic of poetry that four lines in the middle can make such a difference to the end.

Dickinson's readers were living in the 19th century age of science. I doubt that there is any religious significance to the addition or deletion of the fourth stanza. I do wonder about the mechanics though. What (if any) is the significance that this stanza has a different organization than any of the others? Was it a later addition? If it was part of the original, deleted by editors, were they only trying to present a more homogeneous poem without the shock of a rhythmically different part.

Having both versions here adds to the discussion and deepens the analysis. So, again, thank you for your insights and for starting this topic.

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