Monday, August 15, 2011

Does anyone know the meaning of this poem?

She says "since I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me." In other words, she was too busy with life to think about death and dying, so he kindly intervened and told her it was her time. He did so by picking her up in his "coach"...which is a metaphor for the hearse that took her to her grave. She states that the carriage held only her and Death...and immortality. Meaning that once dead you have joined the immortals...who are also dead, but whose souls live on. She says that she put away her labor and her leisure, meaning that when death comes there is no more work nor play, for his civility...meaning that death politely comes when it's time without malice or hate. She speaks of ping by a school, representing her youth, a field of grain, representing her adulthood, and the setting sun, which represented her old age...which she says ped them...as in ped them into darkness and the Dews (capitalized for personification) drew a quivering and chill (the cooling body after it dies...and her "gossamer gown" is her funeral shawl/cowl. The house that was a swelling of the ground was the graves, saying that the roof was scarcely visible, the cornice in the ground...it's the coffin next to the grave/in the grave. She then speaks of the centuries since her death and how it seems shorter than a day, meaning that time has no relevance to the dead, since she first surmised the horses' heads (the horses who pulled the hearse she was in) were headed towards "eternity"...forever...that death is for forever and that centuries will p like days on forever and ever.

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