Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father was a successful lawyer. She was educated at the Amherst and Mount Holyoake Academy, during her early years she was lively, witty and sociable, but from the age of twenty she gradually withdrew into an inner world, finally at forty, refusing to leave home and avoiding everything. contact with strangers. her, although she maintained intimate correspondence with people whom she never saw face to face. Her emotional life remains a mystery, despite much speculation about a possible disappointed love affair, for which one candidate is the Reverend Charles Wadworth, with whom she corresponded and who visited her twice, another is Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, to whom she sent and directed many poems.
She wrote poetry from her childhood, but only seven poems out of 2000 are known to have been published during her lifetime and they appeared anonymously and heavily edited. At first she was considered an eccentric minor poet, but after the publication of her other poems she is now considered a major writer of initial originality. Her work presents recurring themes -a mystical apprehension of the natural world, a concern for the poetic vocation, fame, death and- is expressed in her own rhetoric and language, cryptic, elliptical and, on occasions, self-dramatized and hyperbolic. .
In the poem “Because I could not be stopped by death”, he arrives like a cunning courtier to woo the poet. The poet busy in his earthly activities has not sought death. Rather, death has kindly stopped at his house to take her away, as a lover walks away from his beloved. Once again, death at this moment is not alone, but has immortality as a companion. This suggests that death is taking the poet to his bridal chamber in heaven.
In the poem, Dickinson shows her triumphs over death, as she is ready to accept it in a calm and quiet frame of mind. She puts “work” aside and her “leisure too” because she is impressed by the civility of death. When the carriage begins its journey it has three characters: the poet, death and immortality. Little by little they were passing through the world of the living symbolized by the schoolchildren who played in the arena. Then they leave behind the fields of contemplating cereals and the setting sun. the feelings that gradually come out of the sense of time and space are expressed in the following lines.
“We passed the setting sun” – In other words, they have just left behind a life that is confined by time and space. Conventionally, death is associated with sunset and also with damp and cold when the poet suddenly notices her dress. “Only for chiffon, my dress——–“. It is clear from the description that her journey is from life to death and eternity.
Finally, the poet arrives at the house of death. This house is his grave-“A swelling of the earth.” Since then, she is not aware of the passage of time. Probably several centuries have passed. But she feels that the centuries are shorter than the day she realizes that the horse’s head points towards eternity. Dickinson imagines a situation after death. The image of the horses head conveys the awesome power and majesty associated with death.
Thus, the poem finely expresses Dickinson’s vision of death. The poet points out the inevitability of death, minimizing, at the same time, its fearsome aspect. Although there is a touch of irony in the narrative, we find the sincere belief of the poets in immortality and heaven. In fact, Dickinson expresses his attitude towards death and immortality in symbolic language.
