In the episode ‘They
Keep Killing Suzie’, Max recited the poem when he was incarcerated in the cells
at the Hub. He recited the poem over and
over again, so much so that it triggered the lockdown of the complete building
rendering the team completely helpless, unable to unlock the Hub or operate the
computers, or call out for help. Until
of course, Ianto used the water tower as a conductor and Toshiko used the
computer keyboard mainframe to type in the data required, but only once the
book with the poems of Emily Dickenson had been acquired by DI Swanson at the
local nick.
Emily Dickinson was an
American poet born December 10th 1830, in Amherst,
Massachusetts. Her family were prominent
but not wealthy. Her paternal
grandfather had almost singlehandedly founded the Amherst College, formerly a
boys school, now a college accepting both male and female students.
Emily was a very
reclusive poet and as the years progressed, became more and more withdrawn from
public life, when her mother grew ill, she became the main carer withdrawing
completely. Her only correspondence with
friends was by letter.
Emily had a fixation on death;
she was terribly depressed and had lost a lot of good friends very early on in life. Her house, bought by her father for the
family, on North Pleasant Street overlooked a burial ground, it was described
by a local minister as treeless and ‘forbidding’, which couldn’t have helped
boost her mental state.
The poem ‘Because I
could not stop for death’ was morbidly about Death and how Emily saw him as a
gentleman caller. It was a lyric poem
first published posthumously in Poems: Series 1 in 1890.
It was published under
the title ‘The Chariot’.
Because
I could not stop for Death—
He
kindly stopped for me—
The
Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And
Immortality.
We
slowly drove—He knew no haste
And
I had put away
My
labor and my leisure too,
For
His Civility—
We
passed the School, where Children strove
At
Recess—in the Ring
We
passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We
passed the Setting Sun—
Or
rather—He passed Us—
The
Dews drew quivering and chill—
For
only Gossamer, my Gown—
My
Tippet—only Tulle—
We
paused before a House that seemed
A
Swelling of the Ground—
The
Roof was scarcely visible—
The
Cornice—in the Ground—
Since
then—'tis Centuries—and yet
Feels
shorter than the Day
I
first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were
toward Eternity—
Emily died on May 15th
1886 of Bright disease
she was 55.
To find out more about
Emily and her life visit:
Photo source:
©BBC Torchwood 2006
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