Two of Emily Dickinson's poems, "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" and "I Heard A Fly Buzz-," are both about one of life's few certainties: death. However, they're few similarities and many differences even though they are by the same poet. The difference is both poems were written less than a year apart, their ideas about what lies before and after death differ. In one, there appears to be life after death, but in the other there is nothing. Only a number of clues in each piece help us determine which poem believes in what.
             . In the piece, "Because I Could Not Stop For Death," we are being told the tale of a woman who is being taken away by Death and that death had to come get her. This is our first indication that this poem believes in an afterlife. In most religions, where there is a grim reaper like specter, this entity will deliver a person's soul to another place, usually a heaven or a hell. In the fifth stanza, Death and the woman pause before
             The Cornice in the Ground-" (lines 18-20)
             Although the poem does not directly say it, it is highly probable that this grave is the woman's own. It is also possible the woman's body already rests beneath the soil in a
             casket. If this is at all accurate, then her spirit or soul may be the one who is looking at the "house." Spirits and souls usually mean their s an afterlife involved.
             It isn't until the sixth and final stanza where the audience obtains conclusive evidence that "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" believes in an afterlife. The woman recalls how it has been
             I first surmised the Horses' Heads
             To the woman, it has been a few hundred years since Death visited her, but to her, it has felt like less than 24 hours. Since the body cannot live on for hundreds of years, then it must be none other then the soul who has come to the realization that so much time has passed. The final part with the horses refers to the
             ...