These lines are, of course, from Emily Dickinson's
"Because I could not stop for Death," a beautiful and interesting poem because of its
ironic playfulness and blithe tone for such a moribund subject. The irony of the poem
comes from the fact that the speaker, who is now dead, was unprepared for death, a
process in which she unknowingly had long been involved as the gentlemanly carriage
driver demonstrated by taking her past the schoolhouse where children played and the
fields of mature grain gazed back at her, indicating that she had already passed
childhood and maturity.
Then, when the deceased speaker
reminisces how Death stopped for her, the unsuspecting speaker wore only a
"gossamer" gown of shimmery silk, which connotes her
personal fragility and unpreparedness for death. Her
"tippet," a shawl usually made of fur, is only of
"tulle," or a delicately netted silk, indicating again her
lack of preparation for death as well as her delicate condition of age. In addition, to
this meaning for tippet, a tippet is also the ceremonial scarf worn
by Anglican priests; so, there is the connotation, or suggestion, of spirituality
involved in the fourth stanza, as well, which leads the reader to understand that the
extended metaphor of the carriage ride is the continuous journey of life which
inevitably leads to death, but it is a death which also leads to
immortality.
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