In Emily Dickinson's poem "Because I could not stop for Death," the speaker in the poem is picked up in a carriage by Death and Immortality. The carriage drives slowly past symbols of her childhood and "leisure" (the school), and past symbols of her adult life and "labor" (the fields of grain). Then they pass "the Setting Sun," indicating the end of her life. Finally they come to a stop "before a House that seemed...
In Emily Dickinson's poem "Because I could not stop for Death," the speaker in the poem is picked up in a carriage by Death and Immortality. The carriage drives slowly past symbols of her childhood and "leisure" (the school), and past symbols of her adult life and "labor" (the fields of grain). Then they pass "the Setting Sun," indicating the end of her life. Finally they come to a stop "before a House that seemed / A Swelling of the Ground." This house can be none other than her grave. The roof of the house is "scarcely visible," and its "Cornice - in the Ground." The repetition of the word "Ground" as the exact rhyme of the stanza emphasizes the fact that this journey with death to Eternity ends in the ground. Surely this echoes the words of the familiar English Burial Service: "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Dickinson adds to that, "Ground to Ground." The final stanza speaks about the narrator's life in Eternity. There are no more travels; her last stop, her "final resting place," is this house in the ground, her grave.
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