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Emily DickinsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
In much of Dickinson’s poetry, eternity and immortality are linked, reoccurring symbols. In her famous poem “Because I could not stop for Death,” Dickinson depicts the speaker’s journey with a personified Death inside his carriage. The speaker states, “The Carriage held but just Ourselves—/ And Immortality” (Lines 3-4). In her other poem “My life closed twice before its close,” Dickinson’s speaker acknowledges that, after the deaths of two people they cared about, “it yet remains to see / If Immortality unveil / A third event” (Lines 2-4) or a third death to them. In each poem, the term immortality is used to speak euphemistically of and is “practically synonymous” (“Emily Dickinson on Death,” Ruth Flanders McNaughton, pg. 208) with death itself. Within the Christian theology Dickinson both embraced and struggled with, death is a necessary step on the journey toward eternal life. Once a believer had died, they would be resurrected and given a perfect body before being ushered into a better life in Heaven. Thus, Dickinson always speaks of death in optimistic terms like immortality or eternity, emphasizing the spiritual joy of eternal life after death rather than the pain and grief associated with physical death.
In “The Only News I know,” Dickinson once more uses the terms eternity and immortality.
By Emily Dickinson
A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A Clock stopped—
Emily Dickinson
A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
Emily Dickinson
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
"Faith" is a fine invention
Emily Dickinson
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson
Hope is a strange invention
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson
I Can Wade Grief
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
Emily Dickinson
If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Emily Dickinson
If I should die
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall
Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Emily Dickinson
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a Book
Emily Dickinson