If we examine three of Emily Dickinson’s poems, we get a glimpse into the worldview of the poetess’s feelings on death and immortality. In This world if not conclusion, the speaker comments that the earthly human experience is not final and absolute. It is a prequel to the sequel of death, “This world is not conclusion/A sequel stands beyond”. However, the nature of this sequel is unknown to “philosophies” and it beckons and baffles all human beings from scholars to the most sagacious; a quality that must necessarily go when contemplating this undiscovered country which remains “invisible” but “positive” (read certain rather than “happy or good”). The nature of the sequel of living is one that puzzles scholars and has caused men to be contemptuous of their time and crucify in order to achieve it. In fact, it all comes down to a riddle no matter who, what or how we attempt to uncover it, because it remains a transcendent piece of information human beings are without capacity to fully comprehend even the most sagacious among us, “And through a riddle at the last, sagacity must go”.
Despite the riddle of the sequel to death in the above poem, the fact that a sequel exists, as much as it may “stand beyond” our understanding, is evidence the poetess believes in some form of afterlife even if its nature is not at all defined. The same is not true in Because I could not stop for Death because the narrator is speaking to us from the perspective of someone who has been dead for quite some time (Centuries, in fact), i.e., she is someone who knows what the realm of the afterlife is like. However, unlike the speaker in This world is not conclusion, the speaker in this poem was not curious and preoccupied with wonder about the next realm. Instead, she was not ready to stop for Death, but “He kindly stopped for” her. In fact, Death is personified as a gentleman
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