o protect her from the cold place that they were reaching. Finally, they reached Death’s house. It was “A Swelling of the Ground--” and “ The roof was barely visible—“(18-19). The turning point of the poem was a flashback, when she says, “ Since then—‘tis Centuries—and yet/Feels shorter than the Day/I first surmised the Horses’ Heads/Were toward Eternity—“(21-24). This flashback lets the reader know that she is looking back on that day almost as if she is sad. Centuries have passed, yet that day seems longer than any time that has passed. This poem clearly functions as an allegory. On a symbolic level, it was easy to grasp that this poem was a recollection of the speaker’s death. Dickinson describes this death so well it is almost as if she is writing about her own death. The main clue that this was a poem of death was that she got in a carriage with two guys whose names just happened to be Death and Immortality. Death symbolizes the passing away of the body, and Immortality represents the Christian belief that the body dies but the soul is immortal.When the speaker states, “Because I could not stop for Death—/He kindly stopped for me—,” she implies that most people do not stop to think about their death (1-2). People go on with their busy lives and do not talk or think about death because they are afraid of it. So Death must stop and “kindly” ask people into his carriage. After she went into his carriage, Dickinson goes on to portray what the speaker sees as she is dying. Contrary to the speaker’s busy and fast life, line five shows the carriage is slow and knows no haste. This is because as she is dying she thinks of all the things that she is leaving behind. She is relieved of all her duties at work, but she is also relieved of the activities she enjoys to do in her leisure time with her frie...
