When Death Comes Themes

Including the title, the word death appears in "When Death Comes" five times! It's referenced directly, though not by name, several more times. If you wanted to sum up the basis of the poem to a fr...

In speaking of both life and death, images from the natural world (bear, iceberg, field daisy) are central to the way the speaker communicates in "When Death Comes." For her, the natural world is n...

Curiosity and amazement are a couple key words in our speaker's description of her ideal approach to the world (and her approach to death). The vividness of her opening descriptions of death in "Wh...

In a poem that spends a great deal of time contemplating death, we would expect fear to be a big part of it. Death is scary, right? If you like life, doesn't that mean you dislike and fear death? W...