Dickinson personifies Death, characterizing it like one might describe a suitor, someone who comes to woo the speaker of the poem. Death is not threatening, scary, or strange; rather, he knows "no haste" as they drive away together, and he treats the young woman with "Civility." As they drive, they pass numerous places familiar to her from her life, as well as the "Setting Sun," which seems to symbolize death as well, in a likewise gentle and beautiful way. The personification of Death as a young man who comes to woo the speaker helps to convey the theme that Death is not strange and terrible but, perhaps, only something new. Dickinson presents Death not as an end but rather as the beginning of something different, and this 'something different' isn't frightening at all. In fact, the narrator calls her grave "a House that seemed / A Swelling of the Ground"; it's as though Death is not so different from life.
In this poem, Dickinson uses the extended metaphor of a carriage trip with Death to convey the theme of life as a journey, with the personified Death as the arbiter of when any "stop" is to be made. The "carriage" in which the speaker rides with Death does not move quickly, for Death "knew no haste", and yet it continues inexorably towards its destination, past "School" and "children"—representative of youth and early life—and on towards "the Setting Sun," indicative of life drawing to a close.
Finally, the carriage draws towards "a House that seemed / A Swelling of the Ground." The imagery here is suggestive of burial mounds or mausoleums, set below the level of the earth, as if between the worlds of the living and the dead. At this point, we can surmise from the speaker's tone, Death stops for his companion: "Since then—'tis Centuries."
The poet ends by noting that the horses' heads, as they pull the carriage, were "toward Eternity," where the speaker now finds herself suspended, the fateful journey having come to its close.
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