Emily Dickinson uses personification, giving human like qualities to an object or idea. In this poem, death is seen as a gentleman caller. Death is coming to pick her up for a date in a carriage. "He kindly stopped for me-" is ironic because it shows she would rather not go, but since he is a kind, polite man she will go.

A metaphor "transfers the sense of one word to another" (Barton/Hudson 99). Dickinson relates a house to a grave:

We paused before a House that seemed

The best image Dickinson reveals is the sense of touch.

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain-

Dew usually arrives at night and displays a cold change in temperature. The clothes she describes are thin and not able to keep in the warmth. In a literal sense, the body temperature automatically decreases when someone dies. The speaker suddenly feels death upon her because she feels her body become chilled.

The "Swelling of the Ground" is her new house, her grave. "The Roof" is the new dirt that was dug up and relocated on top of her, and "the Cornice" is the new tombstone molded into the ground.

Symbolism is the use of "an image intended both to stand on its own right and attract meanings to itself" (Hunt 1579). This is maneuvered in stanza three:

Some common words found in the essay are:
Emily Dickinson, Gazing Grain, Tulle- Dew, Swelling Ground, Stop Death, Setting Sun-, Us- Dews, Ground- Roof, gazing grain, Emily Dickinson's, fields gazing, Gazing Grain-, eternal life, emily dickinson, house grave, passed fields gazing, passed fields, fields gazing grain,
Approximate Word count = 541
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)