Write a critical appreciation of the poem BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH.

 A Critical Appreciation: According to Allen Tate, “Because I could not stop for Death” is one of the perfect poems in English is The Chariot, and it exemplifies better than anything else. 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. The poem deals with Death and Immortality, two recurring themes in Emily Dickinson’s poetry. The content of death in the poem eludes forever any explicit definition. He is a gentleman taking a lady out for a drive. But note the restraint that keeps the poet from carrying this so far that it is ludicrous and incredible; and note the subtly interfused erotic motive, which the idea of death has presented to every romantic poet. love being a symbol interchangeable with death. The terror of death is objectified through this figure of the genteel driver, who is made ironically to serve the end of immortality. This is the heart of the poem: she has presented a typical Christian theme in all its final irresolution, without making any final statement about it.

Death is personified, and the words used to describe him are kindly’ and ‘For his Civility therefore presenting him as a polite and courteous gentleman who stops to take her for a ride in his carriage. 

In the second stanza, the fact that she had to put away My Jabour and my leisure too suggest that death is not a hurried, unexpected and dramatic experience as we may think. The third stand takes us away from the immediate environment in which she lives and is familiar with. The deseription of the view could be taken literally as merely an observation of the situspussing her by the beginning of the next stanza the rhythm glanges The first line of every other stanza is written in iambic tetrameter which has the effect of giving the poem a pleasant soothing, peaceful and regular chythm. The line The Dews drew quivering and chill gives a sense of damp and cold and is the only suggestion of discomfort in the entire poem.

The speaker goes intonaco detail about the delicacy of her fabrics. In the next stanza, the regular rhythm returns, but the tranquil and casual tone is gone. During stanzas one to five, the reader is encouraged to think that Dickinson is talking about a journey as it happens, but in the final stanza, we learn that it is in fact in reverse; it is a poem written in the continuum of the journey, which has lasted centuries, through eternity, in the company of Immortality

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