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Dickinson’s poem takes place in a metaphysical space that marks a transition from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead. Surprisingly, Dickinson presents this metaphysical space as if it were a totally ordinary landscape. In the third stanza, for instance, she describes children playing outside a school, as well as the sun setting over fields of grain. But the world comes to seem less ordinary by the end of the poem. After passing through a picturesque landscape, the speaker and Death arrive at a rather strange place (lines 17–20):

     We paused before a House that seemed
     A Swelling of the Ground –
     The Roof was scarcely visible –
     The Cornice – in the Ground –

Here, the speaker describes a house that has been buried under a great mound of dirt. In fact, the house is so completely entombed that, as the speaker notes, “The Roof was scarcely visible.” At this point, the reader realizes that this strange “House” is in fact not a house at all. Instead, it’s the speaker’s grave, which is to say that it’s the metaphorical home where she’ll spend “Eternity” (line 24). Only at the close of the poem does it thus become clear that the poem’s setting is a symbolic landscape, and that the journey across this landscape entails a transition from life to death.

Next section Themes

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