Dickinson and Whitman saw death as a mysterious, transcendent experience. Their attitudes towards death reflect the temperament of their poetry. When I think about Whitman and death, or simply a phrase that seems definitively "Whitmanian," I think of the passage from "Song of Myself" about death:
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
The Whitmanian elements here have to be the sense of life and death forming a kind of totality— the notion of life ever expanding, but also what he calls the "luck" of dying, the notion that death is an unexpected bonus.
Dickinson's sensibility is more internal and private than Whitman's. In her poem "I heard a Fly buzz—when I died," she seems to focus on the actual moment of death:
There interposed a Fly -
With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -
Here, the moment of death is imagined in a kind of morbid physicality, the sound of the fly unexpectedly (unluckily?) dominating the moment when the poet "could not see to see." Dickinson's reference to the "King" earlier in the poem (the King comes to her room "at the last onset" of death) suggests a kind of oblique Christianity that is another key differentiator with Whitman.
Emily Dickinson reveals her attitude toward death in "Because I Could not Stop for Death." She treats Death like a courteous and friendly person who does her a favor by bearing her away to the afterlife. She has a hopeful attitude that views death as a passageway to immortality. In fact, immortality is another guest in the carriage into which Death invites the poem's narrator.
The carriage held but just Ourselves —And Immortality.
This is the type of hopeful attitude that Dickinson exhibits toward death in her poems.
Whitman shows greater grief when it comes to death. In "O Captain! my Captain!," the narrator bemoans the loss of the captain of a ship. The grief is heightened by the comparison of death to the victory that the rest of the crew is experiencing.
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
This quote contrasts "victor" and "exult" with "mournful" and "cold and dead." Whitman expresses the great sorrow of death accompanying victory.
https://poets.org/poem/because-i-could-not-stop-death-479
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45474/o-captain-my-captain
Both Whitman and Dickinson present death not as a final ending point, but as something that can be transcended. To explore this, let us look at two oft-quoted passages from each poet.
Here is an excerpt from Dickinson:
Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.
First, death is personified. Death is a character (as evidenced by "he") who is seemingly driving a carriage. Initially, the scary abyss that is death is made human, companionable, and subservient. Also in the carriage is a third character, Immortality. Immortality is the ability to live forever or to survive death. For Dickens, death is not a fearful entity. Death is a common occurrence, intrinsically paired with immortality. It is an idea that points to common adages today, such as "In death, there is life."
From Whitman, let us consider the epigraph to "Leaves of Grass":
Come, said my Soul,
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
That should I after death invisibly return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
(Tallying Earth's soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas'd smile I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning--as, first, I here and now,
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name. . .
In this epigraph, Whitman directly addresses the function of his writing as it relates to his own mortality. He is writing as a way of marrying his soul to his human body in order to propagate his own life. As a result, when others, "some group of mates," goes on chanting his rhymes, he may keep on with a "pleas'd smile." In essence, when we breathe life by reading Whitman's words today, we breathe life into him.
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