An Explication of “Death” by Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson’s poem “Death” is structured in quatrains, four line stanzas. It is in Iambic meter, so each foot has one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The first and third lines of each quatrain have eight syllables, and the second and fourth have six. This means the first and third lines of each stanza consist of four feet, so those lines are in Iambic tetrameter. The second and fourth lines have three feet each, making them Iambic trimeter. This pattern continues through the poem with a few differences scattered throughout.
This poem begins with a subordinate clause in the first line “Because I could not stop for Death,” Death is capitalized, indicating that it acts as
This poem begins with a subordinate clause in the first line “Because I could not stop for Death,” Death is capitalized, indicating that it acts as