assed the School, where Children strove” (9). The image of youthful vigor and potential is exemplified here, within this line. Also, it is important to note that the children are at a school, a place that gives the sense of enlightenment, understanding and growth, both in the physical and in the psychological. To counter this and to set up an opposing image Dickinson goes on to state “We passed the Setting Sun-“ (12). Few images in our language and text have been used more often to provide a sense of death and ending than the aforementioned. As the sun sets, darkness falls; a day makes way for night, which in turn makes way for a day, and in a sense, so is life. These two competing images (both in the same stanza) are a wonderfully constructed representation of how fleeting life is, possibly as fleeting as the sunset.As the recollection of the trip into eternity continues for the speaker in the poem, a remembrance occurs that is quite splendid and important to the death image. Dickinson states “We passed before a House that seemed / A Swelling in the Ground- / The Roof was scarcely visible- / The Cornice-in the Ground-“ (17-20). Here, Dickinson (through her speaker) recalls viewing a house, very possibly, that house is a tomb or a sarcophagus that is but mildly protruding from the earth. Again, an image is supplied and the theme that death is all around the speaker continues. Continually interjected in the poem are death images, and they follow the speaker throughout the whole of the trip. This gives a sense that Death is really never that far removed from the speaker, and all the while doing this, the reader is forced to question how far away death really is from him/her at any given time. Dickinson’s final stanza is in many ways a perfect conclusion to this death poem, as it gives the reader an idea as to what death may really constitute. “Since then-‘tis Centuries-and yet / F...
