In "Because I Could Not Stop for Death", Emily Dickinson uses remembered images of the past to clarify infinite conceptions through the establishment of a dialectical relationship between reality and imagination, the known and the unknown. Dickinson suggests that the stages of life include death and eternity, which are interconnected. By examining Emily Dickinson's personae, imagery, figures of speech, form, diction and symbolism in "Because I could not stop for Death" one can truly understand the poem's meaning.
             "Because I could not stop for Death" is written in five quatrains that have a similar methodical beat that is comparable to the rhythm created by the horses hooves while they are trotting and drawing the carriage. A constant forward momentum is established throughout the second and third quatrain. For example, in line 5, Dickinson begins death's journey with a slow, forward movement, which can be seen as she writes, "We slowly drove-He knew no haste" (5).
             The third quatrain seems to speed up as the trinity of death, immortality, and the speaker pass the children playing, the fields of grain, and the setting sun one after another. The poem seems to get faster as life goes through its course. In lines 17 and 18, however, the poem seems to slow down as Dickinson writes, "We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground-" (17-18). Dickinson also uses the form of the poem to emphasize the importance of Immortalities presence in the carriage because she writes, "And Immortality" (4) on a line by itself. Perhaps the most notable way in which Dickinson uses form is when she ends the poem with a dash, which seems to indicate that the poem is never ending, just as eternity is never ending. The poem is in common meter, alternating tetrameter and trimeter, but there is a notable exception: in lines thirteen and fourteen, the pattern is switched, with the trimeter preceding the tetramet...