The Importance Of The Afterlife In Emily Dickinson's Poetry

In the poem Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers by Emily Dickinson death is shown not to necessarily lead to a heaven or an afterlife and the speaker says how all life perishes not matter the status of the person. This is seen in the lines from the eighteen sixty-one version. The speaker says, “Diadems – drop – and Doges ¬– surrender–¬¬¬¬/ ¬¬¬Soundless as dots– on a disc of snow– ” (9-10). The word dot shows the insignificance of all different types of people even the people like leaders. The words diadems and doges represent higher people and even these people are not immune to death. In the eighteen fifty-nine version the question of an afterlife is seen. In the lines, “Pipe the Sweet Birds in ignorant cadence— /Ah, what sagacity perished here!” (10-11). The ignorant cadence is the lack of knowledge that the birds have about their own pending death and this is

One line in this poem that describes the belief of an afterlife in the line about meeting again is the line, “I think we shall surely meet again,” (17-18). Walt Whitman is saying this after the solider has died and he believes that he and the comrade will meet again in death because he believes that death is not the end of eternal life. Walt Whitman also writes of death more realistically than Emily Dickinson even though his take on death is impersonal due to it being about the soldier’s death and not imagining his own death like Emily Dickinson. He describes death as he is mourning someone else’s death. He also seems to regret that grief of the death with the line, “But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long, I gazed,” (11). He is use to deaths by know because of the war. The Next poem by Walt Whitman that shows aspects of death is A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and