Because I could not stop for Death

Dickinson's work was never authorized to be published, so it is unknown whether "Because I could not stop for Death" was completed or "abandoned".

The poem personifies Death as a gentleman caller who takes a leisurely carriage ride with the poet to her grave.

The imagery changes from its original nostalgic form of children playing and setting suns to Death's real concern of taking the speaker to the afterlife.

[5] There are interpretations that relate "Because I could not stop for Death" specifically to Christian belief in the afterlife, reading the poem from the perspective of a "delayed final reconciliation of the soul with God.

"[6] In the poem, the speaker joins both "Death" and "Immortality" inside the carriage that collects her, thus personifying a two part process.

If one interprets this according to Christian scripture, the poem imagines an afterlife most similar to the book of Revelation.

First life stops following death, but, à la Revelation, we only encounter eternity at time's end (by way of resurrection and last judgment).

In describing a traditionally frightening experience, the process of dying and passing into eternity, she uses a passive and calm tone.

If the word great means anything in poetry, this poem is one of the greatest in the English language; it is flawless to the last detail.

John Adams set the poem to music as the second movement of his choral symphony Harmonium.