A Clock stopped—

“Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson (1862)

This is one of Dickinson’s most famous poems about Death and afterlife. Unlike “A Clock Stopped—,” where the dead person is personified as a stopped timepiece, here, Death is personified as a courtly gentleman-like entity. He invites the speaker into his carriage to journey with “Immortality” (Line 4). Time is reflected here as in “A Clock stopped—” as the speaker and Death wind up “slowly [driving]” (Line 5) for “centuries” (Line 21). Interestingly, this takes on a sort of vampiric quality of the living dead. The threesome travel across the countryside—past, present, and future—heading toward a never attainable “Eternity” (Line 24).

“I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –” by Emily Dickinson (1863)

In this poem, as in “A Clock stopped—” a person is dying. The “Stillness in the Room / Was like the Stillness in the Air” (Lines 2-3) image echoes the still images of the clock’s figure and its pendulum. This poem, though, is told from the first-person point of view and has a slightly comic tint as the last thing the speaker sees before their death is “a Fly” (Line 12) with its “uncertain stumbling Buzz” (Line 13).