Discuss the treatment of death in three poems of your choice. One must be at least a pre 1900 poem.
             No matter what we refer to death as it is always with us and causes great pain in our lives, but to some it can inspire. It is the theme of Emily Dickinson's poem, 'Because I Could Not Stop for Death'. Rather than causing more pain at the thought of death she wants the reader to think of death as an inevitable change, rather than an end to existence. Death in this poem is told as a woman's last trip, which is headed to eternity. The poem is a ballad, a narrative poem that is recording her journey to death. The line scheme is ABCB and has a punchy lively mood, which reinforces her easy and light-hearted attitude to death, which is different to the more popular views of death such as death being brutal and cruel. To simplify a complex abstract idea to what we know nothing about, one of her strategies is to personify death and make it more human, which makes death seem less chilling. She characterises death and brings it to a more personal level. She uses this metaphor throughout!
             the poem and so making the poem more understandable. She finds herself on a 'date with death', who is a gentleman and makes a call to a naive young woman. We can establish that she welcomes the date and the kindly gentleman, who came to rescue her from her busy schedule, as she had no time to die. In this first scene we see that she does not ride alone in the carriage with death as Immortality rides with them. The poem was written in 1863 and in that era it would have been unheard of for a woman to ride in a carriage alone with a man. We never hear a description of Immortality as the young woman's attention is focused on Death. At this stage we can already see that the poem is comforting about death and very reassuring. She uses assonance to make soft sounds and helps to make the poem non-threatening for example, '...