What is the tone of Emily Dickinson's poem "Because I Could not Stop for Death?"

At the beginning, the poem's tone is steady and nonchalant (or casual). Death is a person riding in a carriage and the poet, when Death stops, joins him for his carriage ride. Rather than the typical response of being frightened or overwrought by death, the poet sees him as "kindly" and full of "civility," as if he is a neighborhood gentleman. She seems perfectly content to join him and together they pass a schoolyard where...

At the beginning, the poem's tone is steady and nonchalant (or casual). Death is a person riding in a carriage and the poet, when Death stops, joins him for his carriage ride. Rather than the typical response of being frightened or overwrought by death, the poet sees him as "kindly" and full of "civility," as if he is a neighborhood gentleman. She seems perfectly content to join him and together they pass a schoolyard where children are playing during recess and then a field of grain. But as they pass the setting sun--or the sun passes them--the tone shifts to become darker (like the time of day) and chillier. The scene becomes subtly more uncanny or un-homelike--now, the poet begins to quiver from the chill, because she realizes she is only dressed in very light clothes--"gossamer" and "tulle." She and Death pass what looks like a house, but it is buried in the ground, because it is, in fact, a grave. It's then that she realizes, with more foreboding, what death or "Eternity" is: being buried with no sense of time. So, although the poem's tone starts out as steady and casual, by the end, it is more chilly.