[RCL]

Sound and Sense in Emily Dickinson’s Grave Poem

(Johnson’s 712; Franklin 479)

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

We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

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

Or rather—He passed Us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—

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

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

Of Emily Dickinson’s many personas, the most remarkable are spirits speaking about the moment of death and its aftermath. Perhaps most widely anthologized, read, and analyzed are “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—“ (465) and “Because I could not stop for Death—“ (712), both brilliant, their meanings elusive. But she is unusually dazzling in the latter: its sound effects, imagery, and meter convey a view that skeptically undercuts Christian notions of an after-life.

In stanza 1, lines 2 and 4 rhyme perfectly (me/Immortality), setting the basic rhyme scheme. There’s slightly more slanting in stanza 2 (away/Civility)—and a surprise in stanza 3: Ring/Sun. Some might read the rhyme as the “n” of each word, but it can also be considered a “conceptual rhyme,” here based on the circle, which echoes the cyclic nature of life and death traced by the imagery: childhood to adulthood, day to night, up to down, dust to dust, and womb to timeless tomb. Multiple internal rhymes occur throughout the poem, but especially in stanza 3: alliteration, assonance, and consonance—listen to the echoing of double esses in lines 1-4!

As in stanza 3, Dickinson’s “After great pain a formal feeling comes—“ (341) conceptually rhymes this pair: round/Ought. Also called “thought rhyme” or “parallelism,” it was common to the Hebrew poetry translated for the Bay Psalm Book, with which she was very familiar. At least one critic, Helen McNeil, considers Dickinson’s “quatrains parodic of the Bay Psalm Book.” Other examples of conceptual rhyme include poems as early as “I have a Bird in spring” (5), which establishes a consistent antithetical pattern that conceptually rhymes the 3rd and 6th lines of each stanza: decoys/gone; flown/return; mine/thine; see/Removed; flown/return. Each pair also rhymes sound and sight elements.

Returning to 712, the rhyme is even more slanted in stanza 4, combining both sight and sound elements (chill/Tulle). With stanza 5, forecasting the inevitable ending in the grave she thinks is “a House,” rhyme give way to the identity of Ground/ Ground. The soul speaks from the vantage point of immortality and eternity; but, ironically, it remains in the ground for “Centuries.” There was a “pause” before the earthen “House” but no apparent continuation. Implicitly, there is no traditional heaven or hell.

For closure, stanza 6 returns to a rhyme similar to that of stanza 1 (Day/Eternity). The naïve voice of stanza 1 has modulated to that of cold and confused acceptance in 6—where the soul admits her “surmise”: a guess or assumption that she was being taken to heaven. At best, perhaps, she’s in a state of suspension this side of heaven’s gate.

Not only does degradation in the rhyme scheme echo the speaker’s soul “passing” away from the body’s time consciousness (stanzas 1-3; in 3, “We passed” thrice), but also there’s a turn, or “volta,” at the poem’s mid-point, line 1 of stanza 4. * After saying, “We passed the Setting Sun” in 3, the speaker has a diminished sense of temporality. She corrects herself as the sun, time’s measure, disappears, saying, “Or rather—He passed Us—.” Her confusion carries over to the next line, assigning “quivering and chill” to the “Dews” rather than to herself. The imagery has traced her transition from the upper world of light and clear memories to the underworld of darkness, chill, and timeless death.

A further clue to Dickinson’s intention may be the metrically ambiguous first line of stanza 4. Since every other stanza’s first line is iambic, it might be read, Or RAther HE passed US, making it trimeter rather than tetrameter as in the other stanzas (all 4343)—as she loses a bit of time? As time itself succumbs to gravity? Or it could be read as 2 iambic feet (Or RAther HE) followed by a spondee (PASSED US), giving it 4 beats and which would emphasize the error of her surmise.

Also unlike other stanzas, the second line has 4 beats: The DEWS grew QUIVerING and CHILL. If the preceding is 3 beats and this 4, Dickinson has reversed the pattern to 3443 just as the speaker’s soul sharply turns from its clear comprehension of the temporal world to timelessness. Either way, these lines call further attention to the ironically grave ending.


*Camille Paglia hears a tonal shift at this mid-point in Break, Blow, Burn, which helped call my attention to the meter of that stanza. I can’t quite see, as she does, that Mr. Death is the cad, trickster, and confidence man who seduces the speaker and betrays her to a gothic house of horror—knowing the poet’s skeptical bent, I suspect self-delusion on the persona’s part. Nor am I completely convinced by the provocative suggestion of a betraying Christ. But Ms Paglia provides an excellent close reading without discussing meter and only mentioning the childlike rhyme of stanza 1.



[This message has been edited by RCL (edited May 23, 2007).]