Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me--
The Carriage held but just Ourselves--
And Immortality.
We slowly drove--He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labour and my leisure too,
For His Civility--
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess--in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain--
We passed the Setting Sun--
Or rather--He passed Us--
The Dews drew quivering and chill--
For only Gossamer, my Gown--
My Tippet--only Tulle--
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground--
The Roof was scarcely visible--
The Cornice--in the Ground--
Since then--'tis Centuries--and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses Heads
Were toward Eternity--
Making Meanings
Because I could not stop for Death
1. If you were going to personify Death, would Death be like the person described in this poem? Why or why not?
2. Can you paraphrase the first two lines in a way that emphasizes their irony? What word in line 2 tells you that the tone is ironic?
3. In stanza 2, civility means “politeness.” How does this kind of behavior on the part of Death and the speaker extend the irony of the first stanza?
4. What three things do the riders pass in stanza 3? What is significant about the fact that the sun passes the carriage in stanzas 4–5, and about the nature of the change in temperature?
5. Stanza 5 is a riddle in itself. What is the nearly buried house?
6. Do you think the concluding stanza introduces a tone of terror, because the speaker has suddenly realized she will ride on forever, conscious of being dead? Or is the poem really an expression of trust and even triumph? Explain your response.
Heart! We Will Forget him!
Emily Dickinson
Heart, we will forget him!
You and I, to-night!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.
When you have done, pray tell me,
That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you’re lagging,
I may remember him!
Making Meanings
Heart! We will forget him!
1. Whom do you identify with in this poem—the head or the heart? Why?
2. Why do you think the heart is asked to take the lead in this situation?
3. What do you think the speaker means by “warmth” and “light”? If you were trying to forget someone, which would you try to forget first?
4. Exclamation points punctuate this little poem, as if the speaker were saying, “Hurry up! We must get this over with!” Why do you suppose the speaker is in such a hurry?
5. Read up on slant rhyme Then, describe the rhyme scheme of the poem, noting the instance of slant rhyme. What is the function of the end rhymes?
6. Some would say this poem is ironic to the core: The speaker doesn’t really expect to—doesn’t want to—forget the man. Do you agree? Why or why not?
If you were coming in the Fall
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall,
I ’d brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.
If I could see you in a year, 5
I ’d wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.
If only centuries delayed,
I ’d count them on my hand, 10
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen’s land.
If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I ’d toss it yonder like a rind, 15
And taste eternity.
But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time’s uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee, 20
That will not state its sting.
Making Meanings
If you were coming in the Fall
1. Do you think the hopes expressed in the poem are fairly common, or are they far-fetched? Explain.
2. How would you describe the speaker’s situation? How does she feel about it?
3. What two things are being compared in the simile in the first stanza?
4. In the second stanza, what domestic articles are the months compared to? Why does the speaker put them in separate drawers?
5. Van Dieman’s Land has come to mean places on the globe farthest away from us. Given this information, how would you paraphrase the third stanza?
6. How would you describe the speaker’s tone in the first four stanzas? How does it change in the fifth stanza, where her exaggerations disappear? What goads, or pushes, her against her will?
7. In folklore, a goblin is a tormenting creature. What do you think Dickinson is suggesting when she says that the bee is a goblin and will not “state” its sting?
I heard a Fly buzz–when I died
Emily Dickinson
I Heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry, 5
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I 10
Could make assignable,—and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then 15
I could not see to see.
Making Meanings
I heard a Fly buzz–when I died
1. Do you find this poem grotesque, moving, humorous, or something else? Explain whether or not you were surprised by the poem’s conclusion.
2. According to the second and third stanzas, how had the speaker and those around her prepared for death?
3. What are the dying person and those around her expecting to find in the room? What appears instead, and why is this ironic?
4. In line 4, Dickinson used the word “Heaves” to refer to the behavior of storms. Why is “Heaves” an appropriate word to describe what is happening in the poem?
5. How does the poet use pauses and specific words in lines 12–13 to make the appearance of the fly dramatic and lively?
6. In the third stanza, what portion of the speaker is “assignable”? What portion, by implication, is not assignable?
7. Who is the “King” (line 7)? What does the phrase “the Windows failed” (line 15) mean?
8. What tone do you hear in this poem? What feeling do you think the poet expresses by inserting the fly into this deathbed scene?
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Once by the Pacific
Robert Frost
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies, 5
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent 10
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last Put out the Light was spoken.
Making Meanings
Nothing Gold Can Stay
1. Explain whether the title of the poem helped you predict its message.
2. Identify four specific things that the poem says cannot, or did not, “stay.”
3. Think what the first buds of leaves look like in spring, and explain what line 1 means.
4. Explain the natural process described in line 5.
5. What Biblical event is alluded to in line 6? What state of mind or situation might “Eden” symbolize here?
6. What different ideas might “gold” symbolize in the poem? Why can’t gold stay—or do you disagree?
7. Show how rhyme and rhythm contribute to this poem’s compactness and completeness. How do alliteration, slant rhyme, and echoing sound effects contribute to the poem’s tightly woven unity?
Making Meanings
Once by the Pacific
1. Describe the scene presented in the poem. What does the scene remind the speaker of?
2. Explain what you think the speaker means by “a night of dark intent /. . . not only a night, an age” (lines 10–11). Whose “intent” is he referring to?
3. Who do you think is the “someone” who “had better be prepared for rage” (line 12)? Whose “rage”?
4. Besides ocean water, what else might be “broken” during that rage?
5. “Put out the light” is something anyone might say on an ordinary evening at home. How does the use of this casual, domestic phrase make the poem’s message even more chilling? What would you say that message is?
6. The poem’s title suggests that Frost is describing a scene he once saw as he gazed at the Pacific Ocean. What larger event might this scene symbolize?
7. Do you view this poem as a warning? Or, do you think Frost is just expressing a certain philosophy of life? Explain what the warning might be, or discuss the philosophy revealed in the poem.
The Death of the Hired Man
Robert Frost
Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table,
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tiptoe down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on his guard. “Silas is back.” 5
She pushed him outward with her through the door
And shut it after her. “Be kind,” she said.
She took the market things from Warren’s arms
And set them on the porch, then drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps. 10
“When was I ever anything but kind to him?
But I’ll not have the fellow back,” he said.
“I told him so last haying, didn’t I?
If he left then, I said, that ended it.
What good is he? Who else will harbor him 15
At his age for the little he can do?
What help he is there’s no depending on.
Off he goes always when I need him most.
He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,
Enough at least to buy tobacco with, 20
So he won’t have to beg and be beholden.
‘All right,’ I say, ‘I can’t afford to pay
Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.’
‘Someone else can.’ ‘Then someone else will have to.’
I shouldn’t mind his bettering himself 25
If that was what it was. You can be certain,
When he begins like that, there’s someone at him
Trying to coax him off with pocket money—
In haying time, when any help is scarce.
In winter he comes back to us. I’m done.” 30
“Sh! not so loud: He’ll hear you,” Mary said.
“I want him to: He’ll have to soon or late.”
“He’s worn out. He’s asleep beside the stove.
When I came up from Rowe’s I found him here,
Huddled against the barn door fast asleep, 35
A miserable sight, and frightening, too—
You needn’t smile—I didn’t recognize him—
I wasn’t looking for him—and he’s changed.
Wait till you see.”
“Where did you say he’d been?”
“He didn’t say. I dragged him to the house, 40
And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.
I tried to make him talk about his travels.
Nothing would do: He just kept nodding off."
“What did he say? Did he say anything?”
“But little.”
“Anything? Mary, confess 45
He said he’d come to ditch the meadow for me.”
“Warren!”
“But did he? I just want to know.”
“Of course he did. What would you have him say?
Surely you wouldn’t grudge the poor old man
Some humble way to save his self-respect. 50
He added, if you really care to know,
He meant to clear the upper pasture, too.
That sounds like something you have heard before?
Warren, I wish you could have heard the way
He jumbled everything. I stopped to look 55
Two or three times—he made me feel so queer—
To see if he was talking in his sleep.
He ran on° Harold Wilson—you remember—
The boy you had in haying four years since.
He’s finished school, and teaching in his college. 60
Silas declares you’ll have to get him back.
He says they two will make a team for work:
Between them they will lay this farm as smooth!
The way he mixed that in with other things.
He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft 65
On education—you know how they fought
All through July under the blazing sun,
Silas up on the cart to build the load,
Harold along beside to pitch it on.”
“Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot.” 70
“Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.
You wouldn’t think they would. How some things linger!
Harold’s young college-boy’s assurance piqued him.
After so many years he still keeps finding
Good arguments he sees he might have used. 75
I sympathize. I know just how it feels
To think of the right thing to say too late.
Harold’s associated in his mind with Latin.
He asked me what I thought of Harold’s saying
He studied Latin, like the violin, 80
Because he liked it—that an argument!
He said he couldn’t make the boy believe
He could find water with a hazel prong—
Which showed how much good school had ever done him.
He wanted to go over that. But most of all 85
He thinks if he could have another chance
To teach him how to build a load of hay——”
“I know, that’s Silas’ one accomplishment.
He bundles every forkful in its place,
And tags and numbers it for future reference, 90