Death and Impermanence from Two Poems - Research Paper Example

?Introduction Death is a theme that permeates much of our literature, and it is no different in the realm of poetry. This is shown by two poems – Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost, and Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson. These poems have remarkable similarities, and one of the main similarities is that they both emphasize how fleeting and short life really is. They both use metaphors to get their point across – Dickinson uses the fields of grazing grain to denotes maturity, which is before decline, and Frost uses the metaphor of autumn for the same thing. Perhaps Dickinson’s poem is more depressing, in the end, due to the way that she emphasizes the suddenness of death and the fact that we are alone when we die, but both poems capture the seasons of life and death very well. Discussion Nature’s First Green Is Gold/The Hardest Hue to Hold/Her Early Leaf’s A Flower/But Only For An Hour/Then Leaf Subsides to Leaf/So Eden Sank to Grief/So Dawn Goes Down to Day/Nothing Gold Can Stay (Frost). So goes the immortal poem of Robert Frost about the impermanence of beauty, and, perhaps, even life. Here, Frost is clearly using a metaphor which is, according to Sutton (1958), the one thing that distinguishes the language of imaginative literature from that of science (Sutton, 1958, p. 222). Specifically, according to Moynihan (1958), the poem reflects man’s inner psychological world, which is the “inner weather,” and the metaphor of autumn and the other seasons is the outer weather (Moynihan, 1958, p. 348). The first thing that is striking about this poem is that it implies that autumn is the first stage of nature, when Frost states that “Nature’s First Green is Gold.” This is because, naturally, gold is an autumnal color, while green is the color of spring. If Frost is talking about the stages of man, a person is the autumn of their life is somebody who is perhaps going into his or her “middle age” – assuming that the average life span is 80 years old, then a person in the autumn of life would be approaching 40, assuming that spring time would be ages 0-20, summer time would be ages 20-40, autumn would be ages 40-60, and winter would be ages 60-80. This would put a person in his or middle-age. Frost implies, perhaps, that the middle-age of a person is when a person’s life truly begins, because, like “nature’s first green was gold” implies a beginning. This would be consistent with the view of some people that their youths were wasted because they did not attain proper wisdom, and it was only when they matured that did they truly see what life is about. This is the inner world that is reflected in this stanza. The next stanza implies, however, that a person’s golden years, when a person ages and approaches death, is not far off, even for a person in his or her middle ages – for the gold is the hardest hue to hold. This means that Frost is telling individuals to enjoy the last vestiges of youth while they can, because, perhaps, the body begins to break down around a person’s middle age, and a person might lose a step here and there. Before the individual knows it, their body is breaking down completely, and the person enters his or her declining years. However, when a person is in his or her forties, this decline has not yet commenced, so Frost is stating that one should enjoy relative youth while it lasts. The next stanza, however, seems to imply youth – “her early leaf’s a flower.” This conjures up visions of springtime, which would be when a person is in his or her early youth, from birth to age twenty. Once again, however, Frost emphasizes the impermanence of this, when he states “but only for an hour.” This once again emphasizes the fleeting nature of time, as a person’s youth tends to fly by, almost unnoticed. Sometimes it feels like a person is young, then, in a flash, he or she is old and wandering where his or her youth went. It is this inner phenomenon which is implied by the first four stanzas – that a person’s youth, or relative youth, will soon be replaced by old age, so enjoy it while you can. The next stanza is a bit more difficult to discern – “so leaf subsides to leaf.” This perhaps is the image of leaves falling off of a tree, which would mean that winter is upon the person. This would mean that the person is in his or her golden years, age 60-80 or even beyond. What is clear is that there is not another season for the individual, as winter would be the last season of a person’s life. Once the person goes through the “winter” of his or her life, then that person will be dead. This is made clear in the next stanza, which states that “So Eden Sank to Grief.” Eden could be the name of an individual who is mourning the dead person. Or, it could be the Garden of Eden, which was paradise and the site of the fall of man. Perhaps Frost is lamenting the fact that everybody must die, and this would not have been necessarily true if man did not fall in the Garden of Eden. Perhaps man would have been accorded everlasting life, in a bodily form, if this did not occur, and this is the occasion for grief. “So Dawn Goes Down to Day” – this is most likely the dawn, which is the beginning of life. This is a bit confusing, for, in the previous stanza, it is implied that the person died, because he or she approached the winter of his or her life, and his or her mortality is denoted by the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. Perhaps here Frost is talking about a spiritual rebirth, in heaven or the act of being reincarnated. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” – this is the most obvious of the lines of the poem, for it denotes that nothing is permanent. A person’s youth is not permanent, nor is the person’s life. And, since life is precious, the word “gold” has another meaning, because gold is also precious. Like precious gold, a person’s life is fleeting, and this is the meaning of this poem. While the Frost poem was analyzed stanza by stanza, as this poem accorded itself to just this interpretation, Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” really has to be analyzed as a whole. To do otherwise would be an injustice to the poem, for Dickinson’s poetry, according to Glenn (1943) can only be analyzed as a whole and not in fragments. This is because certain fragments in her poetry may lead the reader in one direction, while other fragments in her poetry may lead the read in the opposite direction. Therefore, her poems as a whole is what should be analyzed (Glenn, 1943, pp. 575-576). The first striking element of this poem is that Dickinson, like Frost, uses a metaphor of seasons to denote the autumn or maturity of one’s life – this is when she talks about passing through “fields of grazing grain” (Dickinson). Hiltner (2001) states that this is passing through the maturity of one’s life, because it denotes a time in the growing season when the fields have reached maturity, and their stalks have grown big and strong (Hiltner, 2001, p. 26). As with Frost, this maturity is what leads to old age, which is, for Dickinson, “the setting sun.” Earlier in the stanza, Dickinson talked of childhood, so this makes the whole of this stanza more clear - that death, in driving the narrator to her final destination, allowed the narrator to “see” all the eras of her life. This is like the cliche of one’s life passing before one’s eyes right before death, and this is apparently what this is alluding to. At the same time, Dickinson was also implying about how quickly things go. This is obvious, as Death, as the driver of the coach, drives “slowly,” yet it seems that the stages of life take no time at all to pass through. Indeed, the stages of life are told in a mere four sentences. Therefore, Dickinson, like Frost, is lamenting how quickly one’s life passes. One is a child, then one becomes mature, then one declines, and it all happens in a blink of an eye. This much is obvious by the brevity of this particular stanza. Another image that is prominent in this poem is just how quickly and unexpectedly death will come. This is made clear in that the narrator is talking about only being dressed in a very light gown, as it is described as “gossamer.” This description was put into the poem to show that one can never be prepared to meet death, for, if she would have been prepared, she would have been dressed in something more fitting for this particular occasion. This shows that death can happen anywhere, at any time, and the individual will not be aware of just when that day will be. Plus, it may be entirely unexpected – such as through a car accident or another misadventure, and the person will be wholly unprepared to die. This is somewhat different from the Frost poem, in that this poem takes the reader neatly through the different stages of life, from birth to old age. Since a person who is older does not die entirely unexpectedly, Frost’s poem did not have the same image of sudden and unexpected death that Dickinson’s does. Dickinson’s poem also has a feel of being alone at the moment of death, and how one must go through the process of dying alone. This is clear in the first stanza, where Dickinson talks about the carriage who is picking her up, and the carriage held only herself and death and one other entity - immortality. That immortality is also in the carriage is interesting. Obviously, Dickinson is stating that one is not immortal, because death is the overall theme of this poem. Yet immortality is also in the carriage. This seems to be stating that the illusion of immortality, that one feels, while one is living, that death will never come and the person will live forever, dies when the person dies as well. Thus, immortality is shown to be only an illusion, and it is going to the grave with her. This stanza is also different from the Frost poem, as Frost does not indicate the loneliness of death in his poem. Then, in the final stanza, in case it was missed earlier, Dickinson makes clear just how fleeting life is when she states that each life feels shorter than the day. This stanza is most in accordance with Frost’s imagery, in that, like Frost, Dickinson is lamenting the fleeting of life, how one’s life feels like it is over before it ever has really begun. That one blinks, and suddenly one is transported from youth to old age and the grave, and this is the tragedy of life. Conclusion Dickinson’s poem and Frost’s poem have much in common. Both use metaphors to illustrate life, the impermanence of life, and death. Both use specifically seasonal metaphors to show a person in his or prime of life – Frost uses the autumn metaphor, and Dickinson uses the metaphor of “fields of grazing grain” to show this. Both emphasize that life is fleeting, therefore one must hold on to every passing day as if it is his or her last, because, indeed, it might be. Where they diverge, however, is in other details. Dickinson emphasizes that death may be sudden and unexpected, and, at any rate, nobody knows when his or her time is up. Frost’s imagery does not really go into this so much, as he uses imagery that conjures up the neat stages of life and does not really imply that a person may be suddenly taken in the prime of his or her life. Dickinson also states that one dies alone, and goes through the journey of death alone, and Frost does not really imply this, either. In the end, Dickinson’s poem was a bit more pessimistic and depressing then Frost’s, although they both have essentially the same theme. Sources Used Dickinson, E. Because I could not stop for death. Available online: http://academic. brooklyn. cuny.edu /english/melani/cs6/stop.html. Frost, R. Nothing gold can stay. Available online: http://www.online-literature.com/frost/748/ Glenn, E. (1943) Emily Dickinson’s poetry: A re-evaluation. The Sewanee Review, vol. 51, no. 4: pp. 574-588. Hiltner, K. (2001) Because I, Persephone, could not stop for death: Emily Dickinson and the goddess. The Emily Dickinson Journal, vol. 10, no. 2: pp. 22-42. Moynihan, W. (1958) Fall and winter in Frost. Modern Language Notes, vol. 73, no. 5: pp. 348-350. Sutton, W. (1958) The contextualist dilemma. Or fallacy? The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 17, no. 2: pp. 219-229. Read More