The Role of Time and Death

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the role that time and death play in both Emily Dickinson's poem "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" and Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias", explaining that in Emily Dickinson's poem time is portrayed as an infinite, dream like transition to death, while in Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem time is finite and a vivid reminder of death.

From the Paper:

"The last stanza of Dickinson's poem sums up the whole of the speaker's experience with death. "Since then - 'tis Centuries - and yet / Feels shorter than the Day" (lines 21-22), shows that the journey to death and death itself are really indistinguishable from each other. "I first surmised the Horses' Heads / Were toward Eternity" (lines 23-24), supports the idea that the journey to death is timeless and infinite, thus making the exact moment of arrival unimportant. The speaker is stuck in a limbo like state where time is irrelevant and the recollection of the past is just as vivid as the present."

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