Analyzing the Text
These places are a reminder of time passing, a child grows into an adult and heads to death, grain grows and then is picked and dies. These are places where Death is active.
The speaker’s attitude in the first three stanzas is rather light-hearted, a friendly trip with Death, as shown by the use of words like “kindly” (2) and “Civility” (8). This changes in stanza four when the speaker realizes she is seeing her own eventual demise (the death of all things in the end). The transition is evident with the diction and line, “He passed Us” (13) and “chill” (14).