<P> The poem was published posthumously in 1890 in Poems : Series 1 , a collection of Dickinson 's poems assembled and edited by her friends Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson . The poem was published under the title `` The Chariot '' . It is composed in six quatrains with the meter alternating between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter . Stanzas 1 , 2 , 4 , and 6 employ end rhyme in their second and fourth lines , but some of these are only close rhyme or eye rhyme . In the third stanza , there is no end rhyme , but `` ring '' in line 2 rhymes with `` gazing '' and `` setting '' in lines 3 and 4 respectively . Internal rhyme is scattered throughout . Figures of speech include alliteration , anaphora , paradox , and personification . The poem personifies Death as a gentleman caller who takes a leisurely carriage ride with the poet to her grave . She also personifies immortality . The volta ( turn ) happens in the fourth quatrain . Structurally , the syllables shift from its constant 8 - 6 - 8 - 6 scheme to 6 - 8 - 8 - 6 . This parallels with the undertones of the sixth quatrain . The personification of death changes from one of pleasantry to one of ambiguity and morbidity : `` Or rather -- He passed Us -- / The Dews drew quivering and chill -- '' ( 13 - 14 ) . The imagery changes from its original nostalgic form of children playing and setting suns to Death 's real concern of taking the speaker to afterlife . </P>
where was because i could not stop for death published
1890