Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

These lines, which open the poem, are among the most well known of Dickinson’s verses. Perhaps most memorable about these lines is the personification of Death as a gentleman figure who “kindly” takes the time to escort the speaker to her death in his carriage. Less frequently noticed is the fact that Dickinson also personifies Immortality, though she provides no additional details regarding this figure’s appearance or bearing. Immortality’s status in the poem is therefore somewhat mysterious. However, it seems that Dickinson deliberately opens the poem with both personified figures as a way to introduce a basic tension between two competing ideas: death as the absolute end of life, and death as the beginning of an eternal afterlife.

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

In lines 9–12, which comprise the third stanza, the speaker describes the carriage ride that she takes with Death and Immortality through a country landscape. Though presented as an ordinary place, this landscape is allegorical in nature and symbolizes the full arc of a human life. For instance, the children playing at recess represent youth and the hopeful excitement of that time of life. By contrast, “the Fields of Grazing Grain” represent the time of mature adulthood, when the promise of youth comes to fruition. Finally, “the Setting Sun” represents death. In passing through this allegorical landscape, the speaker reviews the course of her own life while simultaneously making a transition from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead.

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –

The sixth stanza (lines 21–24) concludes the poem in a surprising way. For one thing, the speaker interrupts the narrative of her overland journey without recounting the final transition from the carriage to a mysterious, buried house. The fifth stanza describes how the carriage paused before this house, which symbolizes the speaker’s final resting place: the grave. But then, in the sixth stanza, the speaker’s point of view shifts to the present time, revealing that she died “Centuries” ago. From her perspective, however, those centuries have seemed no longer than a single day, for she has entered a mode of existence in which ordinary human time has no meaning. That is, she has entered “Eternity.” Notably, Dickinson uses sibilance throughout the sixth stanza to mimic the timelessness of eternity. Sibilance refers to a special type of consonance in which S sounds repeat in sequential or nearby words. The first three lines of the final stanza contain a whopping total of twelve distinct S sounds. And because S sounds take more time to pronounce than any other sound, when repeated in this way they create a subtle sense of time’s slowing as the speaker approaches her eternal rest.

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