-
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 labor, 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 grew 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 but a
mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and
yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
我无暇去会死亡
爱米莉·伊丽莎白·狄更生
?????????
我无暇去会死亡，
死神便和善地接我前往，
我只好放下劳作与闲暇，
无法拒绝他的殷勤礼让。
?
我们一起坐上马车，
还有永生陪伴身旁，
我们驱车缓缓前行，
他悠然自得不慌不忙。
我们经过校园，
娱乐的孩子挤满操场，
我们经过田野，麦穗张望，
我们经过西沉的太阳。
或许该是夕阳经过我们吧，
露珠抖动
，略显苍凉，
只为我的面纱、斗篷，
还有我薄丝织就的衣裳。
我们经过一个隆起的土堆，
那似乎是一座住房，
屋顶几乎无法看见，
屋架也在地下埋藏。
感觉比一天还要短暂，
虽然自此千万年岁月漫长，
我初次产
生这种猜测：
永恒正是马头所向。
Type of Work
―Because I Could Not Stop for Death‖ is
a
lyric
poem on the theme of
death. The contains six
stanzas,
each
with
four
lines.
A
four-
line
stanza
is
called
a
quatrain.
The
poem
was
first
published in 1890 in
Poems,
Series 1
, a collection of Miss
Dickinson's poems that was edited by
two of her friends, Mabel Loomis Todd
and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The editors titled
the poem
Commentary and Theme
―Because I Could Not Stop
for Death‖ reveals Emily Dickinson’s calm
acceptance of death. It
is surprising
that she presents the experience as being no more
frightening than receiving a
gentleman
caller
—
in this case, her
fiancé (Death personified).
The journey to the grave begins in
Stanza 1, when Death comes calling in a carriage
in which
Immortality is also a
passenger. As the trip continues in Stanza 2, the
carriage trundles along
at an easy,
unhurried pace, perhaps suggesting that death has
arrived in the form of a disease
or
debility that takes its
time
to kill.
Then,
in
Stanza
3,
the
author
appears
to review the
stages of her life: childhood (the
recess scene), maturity (the ripe, hence, ―gazing‖
grain), and
the
descent
into
death
(the
setting
sun)
–
as
she
passes
to
the
other
side.
There,
she
experiences
a
chill
because
she
is
not
warmly
dressed.
In
fact,
her
garments
are
more
appropriate for a
wedding, representing a new beginning, than for a
funeral, representing an
end.
Her description of the
grave as her ―house‖ indicates how comfortable she
feels about death.
There, after
centuries pass, so pleasant is her new life that
time seems to stand still, feeling
―shorter than a Day.‖
The overall theme of the
poem seems to be that death is not to be feared
since it is a natural
part of the
endless cycle of nature. Her view of death may
also reflect her personality and
religious beliefs. On the one hand, as
a spinster, she was somewhat reclusive and
introspective,
tending to dwell on
loneliness and death. On the other hand, as a
Christian and a Bible reader,
she was
optimistic about her ultimate fate and appeared to
see death as a friend.
Characters
Speaker
: A woman who speaks
from the grave. She says she calmly accepted
death. In fact,
she seemed to welcome
death as a suitor whom she planned to
Death
: Suitor who called for
the narrator to escort her to eternity.
Immortality
: A
passenger in the carriage.
Children
: Boys and girls at
play in a schoolyard. They symbolize childhood as
a stage of life.
Text and Notes
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 labor, 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 grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my
gown
,
1
My
tippet
2
only
tulle
.
3
We paused before a
house
4
that
seemed
A swelling of the
ground;
The roof was
scarcely visible,
The
cornice
5
but a
mound.
Since then 'tis
centuries
,
6
and
yet each
Feels shorter than
the day
I first surmised
the horses' heads
Were
toward eternity.
Notes
1...gossamer my gown: Thin
wedding dress for the speaker's marriage to Death.
2...tippet: Scarf for neck
or shoulders.
3...tulle:
Netting.
4...house:
Speaker's tomb.
5...cornice: Horizontal molding along
the top of a wall.
6...Since . . . centuries: The length
of time she has been in the tomb.
Meter
In each stanza, the first
line has eight syllables (four feet); the second,
six syllables (three
feet); the third,
eight syllables (four feet); and the fourth, six
syllables (three feet). The
meter
alternates between iambic tetrameter (lines with
eight syllables, or four feet) and
iambic trimeter (lines with six
syllables, or three feet). In iambic meter, the
feet (pairs of
syllables) contain an
unstressed syllable followed by a stressed
syllable. (For detailed
information on
meter,
click here
.) The
following example demonstrates the metric scheme.