Things To Consider:

• Imagery
• Rhyme vs. Slant Rhyme
• Metaphor
• Tone
• Theme
• Sleeping, Waking, and Stopping
• Reading Poetry Site 

Emily Dickinson Complete Poems

Robert Frost On-Line "Stopping by Woods"  and Other Poems

Theodore Roethke Selected Poems

** Homework Questions **

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
"Because I Could Not Stop For Death"
15:

• Describe the Tone of this Poem.
• What is the Speaker's View Toward Death?
• Explain:  "We passed the Setting Sun-- //  Or rather--He passed Us" (12-13).

• Why does the Speaker stop?
• Explain:  "But I have promises to keep" (14).
• Why does he repeat the final line?

• Explain:  "Nature is the antidote for modern living" (18).

• Villanelle:  "A fixed nineteen-line form, originally in French, employing only two rhymes and repeating two lines according to a set pattern" (H&H 523).

• Describe the rhyme scheme.
• What is the subject of the poem?
• Explain:  "The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair" (11).

 "Because I Could Not Stop For Death"

• Describe the Rhyme Scheme of this poem.
• Why is Death described as "kindly" (2) and as demonstrating "civility" (8)?
• What are the "Fields of Gazing Grain" (11)?  Why are they described this way?
• What "House" does she describe in the 5th stanza?
• How does this poem compare with Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" or Kafka's "Metaphorphosis"?

• Describe the Rhyme Scheme.
• Why is it important that he not be seen?

• What phrases are repeated in this poem?  Why?
• Explain:  "What falls away is always.  And is near" ( 17).
• What does it mean to "wake to sleep"?