Death is personified - a shocking opening line to us
but death would have been more common during ED's lifetime - mortality rates and the civil war
shocking also in the narrative voice being of a dead woman imagining her journey to the grave. She speaks from immortality - outside of time.
She imagines a journey to the grave side.
A playful idea as death is a gentleman - and yet her personal life was quite isolated and her social interaction with men was very limited.
The poem is in the form of a gothic story - it contains references to death - even personified, a hearse and it tells a story from the grave.
The poem uses a series of contrasts - essentially between life and death.
