This paper analyzes and compares two classic poems that deal with the subject of death, Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" and Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night." One personifies it as a silent, courtly, and inevitable companion, the other vilifies it as an enemy to be battled. Both acknowledge its power in six brief stanzas, using simple words and few lines, and both continue to be memorable and powerful works as much because of their simplicity as for the universal voice which each applies to the end of every human life.
Dickinson's poem, written in the first person, turns Death into a polite escort who "kindly stopped for me," taking the speaker away from the world toward immortality and eternity. The carriage in which they ride slowly passes three vistas, each symbolizing a stage of life. First is the stage of childhood, "where children strove/At recess, in the ring," the reminder that every life begins with learning and playing. Without using any words to evoke sound, Dickinson nevertheless makes the reader hear laughter and activity.
Next come "the fields of gazing grain," a reminder of the labor and leisure to which she has alluded earlier. Though this is the longest period of life, it is given the shortest glimpse from the passing carriage, a reminder that the workaday world is really not the most important part.
At the end, "we passed the setting sun./Or rather, he passed us," and she finds herself "before a house that seemed/A swelling in the ground," the grave that will be home to her body. However, though this receives the most elaborate description, she ends with the realization that her final destination is really eternity. It is a gentle realization.
It stands in sharp contrast to Thomas's powerful opposition to an inevitable end. He repeats two commands throughout the poem, commands which comprise eight of the nineteen lines: "Do not go gentle int...