Personification

Death is presented in several different ways in this poem. One of the more striking images of death is when it is shown as a pretty young woman in "Through the Looking Glass." Here, death is a presence that neither the speaker of the poem nor her lover can ignore. The title of this section links death to the speaker, making a connection between her younger self and the death that looms ahead in old age. In "And the Last," death is described as "looming above us," in the way that the poem's speaker described herself as being in the sky in "In Place of a Dedication." The poem is concerned with the ways that death is unknowable. In the attempt to explain death it not only turns this concept into a person, but gives it characteristics of the person that the poem's speaker knows best—herself.

Point of View