“A Bird Came Down the Walk” is a poem by the American poet Emily Dickinson. It was likely written sometime between 1859 and 1861 and first published posthumously in 1891. The poem depicts the poet’s encounter with a bird that has landed on the ground. Through imaginative and precise description, Dickinson captures the movements and actions of the bird as it explores the earth. The poem consists of five quatrains that follow the bird as it hops, looks, drinks, eats, and finally flies away. Dickinson uses whimsical and vivid imagery to bring the bird to life. Her skillful use of diction, rhythm, and structure evoke the bird’s spirit and energy. “A Bird Came Down the Walk” shows Dickinson’s keen observation of nature and her ability to convey living essence through poetry.
Summary of the Poem
Here is a brief summary of the events described in the poem “A Bird Came Down the Walk”:
Stanza 1
– The speaker notices a bird that has landed on the ground near where she is walking.
– It catches her attention and she stops to observe it.
Stanza 2
– The bird hops along the ground, looking for something.
– It occasionally stops, then resumes hopping.
Stanza 3
– The bird finds and drinks from a puddle of water on the ground.
Stanza 4
– It spots and picks up a worm from the ground, eating it for sustenance.
Stanza 5
– Having quenched its thirst and hunger, the bird flies up and away, off on its journey once more.
– The encounter ends as the speaker watches the bird disappear into the distance.
So in summary, the five stanza poem follows a bird that the speaker notices landing near her. She watches closely as it hops along, drinks from a puddle, eats a worm, and then flies away after fulfilling its needs. The poem vividly depicts the bird’s actions using imaginative language.
Analysis of Key Elements
Dickinson uses several literary techniques and devices that contribute to the effect and meaning of the poem. Let’s analyze some of the key elements:
Language and Imagery
Dickinson employs vivid, whimsical imagery and language to bring the bird to life. She personifies the bird, giving it human-like actions and qualities. For example, the bird “hopped” along the walk, “put up his head,” “drank,” then “ate” a worm before flying away “in the sky.” This animate language creates a lively, dynamic scene.
Specific details like describing the bird’s eyes as “bead” and the worm as “raw” further enhances the imagery. Dickinson’s skillful word choices add color and texture to the poem.
Structure and Rhyme Scheme
The poem consists of five quatrains with an alternating rhyme scheme of ABCB. This interlocking structure parallels the hopping, pausing movement of the bird as it progresses through actions of drinking, eating, and flying away.
The brevity of the quatrains also matches the fleeting, ephemeral nature of the encounter between the bird and the speaker. The rhyme and structure artfully reinforce the meaning and imagery of the poem.
Tone and Mood
The tone of the poem is one of fascination, curiosity, and admiration. The speaker is engaged by every small action of the bird. There is also a playful, buoyant mood conveyed through the bird’s movements and the speaker’s delighted observation of it.
Dickinson manages to make an ordinary event magical and brings an animated spirit to the bird and its mundane activities like drinking and eating.
Critical Analysis
“A Bird Came Down the Walk” demonstrates Dickinson’s mastery of poetic technique to capture a brief but profound experience. Here is some deeper analysis of the poem’s significance:
Focus on Ordinary Nature
The poem takes a common, ordinary event – noticing a bird hopping on the ground – and elevates into something extraordinary through imaginative description. Like much of her work, Dickinson shows that moments of beauty and meaning can be found in one’s everyday surroundings if appreciated with imagination and awe.
Appreciation of Sentient Life
Dickinson portrays the bird as a living, feeling creature rather than just an object or animal. Details like the “bead” eyes and the bird cocking its head to drink show the speaker’s appreciation of its sentient nature. The poem reflects Dickinson’s belief in valuing all life.
Transcendence through Art
The poem transforms an ephemeral experience into something enduring through art. Long after the bird has flown away, the vivid imagery preserves its living essence. Dickinson’s artistry allows the momentary encounter to trascend time and space. The poem itself becomes a bird that forever “Came down the Walk” for generations of readers.
Unity of Human and Nature
The speaker’s rapt attention to the bird and its earthly activities like drinking and eating demonstrates the kinship between humankind and nature. Dickinson recognizes continuity and connection, not separation, between the human observer and the natural world.
Major Themes
Some of the major themes that emerge from the poem include:
Appreciation of Nature
The poem demonstrates keen observation and appreciation of the natural world. Dickinson notices the smallest details of the bird’s physical features and actions. Her speaker is profoundly present in the moment of encountering the bird.
Curiosity and Wonder
There is a spirit of curiosity and wonder in how the speaker engages with the bird. Ordinary becomes exciting and new when approached with openness and awe. Dickinson captures this sense of joyous discovery.
Freedom and Transcendence
The bird’s ability to fly and travel freely symbolizes a capacity to transcend boundaries. Its flight at the end suggests a longing for higher experience and understanding that the human speaker shares.
Brevity of Life
The fleeting encounter reminds that life’s joys and epiphanies are often short. The bird’s fly away ending symbolizes how all moments and experiences, no matter how magical, eventually pass. This transience adds poignancy to the poem.
Unity of Creation
Dickinson recognizes the bird as a fellow creature belonging to the same world as the human speaker. There is continuity in their shared terrestrial existence and need for basic sustenance like water and food. She implies a unified view of all existence.
Use of Literary Devices
Dickinson uses the following literary devices skillfully in the poem:
Personification
She personifies the bird by giving it human actions and capacities like hopping, drinking, eating, cocking its head. This technique brings the bird to life.
Alliteration
Dickinson uses alliterative phrases like “drank and drank,” “stood straight,” and “crumb after crumb” to add musicality.
Imagery
Vivid sensory imagery like “bead eyes,” “grass,” “a laced edge,” “raw” worm evokes the scene concretely.
Simile
She uses the simile “like a chip” to enhance the description of the bird drinking.
Metaphor
The metaphor “rout is come” suggests the worm’s destruction at the hands of the bird.
Consonance
Repeated consonant sounds in words like “walk,” “head,” “stand,” “eat,” and “crumb” create melodic rhythm.
Significance of Title
The concise, descriptive title “A Bird Came Down the Walk” summarizes the encounter at the heart of the poem. The active verb “came down” indicates that the bird descended from the sky and landed on the earthly plane where the speaker is walking.
So the title neatly encapsulates the poem’s subject – the arrival of a bird to the speaker’s immediate environment. It sets up the chance nature of the meeting between human and bird that the poem explores. The title provides an elegant beginning that leads into the more imaginative exploration within the poem. It orients the reader to the essence of the experience depicted.
Historical and Literary Context
Here is some relevant historical and literary context for the poem:
Setting in Amherst, Massachusetts
Emily Dickinson spent most of her life in Amherst, Massachusetts where she did much of her writing. The pastoral setting of this small New England town influenced her poetry like this one that observes nature.
Written 1860-1861
The poem is believed to have been composed sometime between 1859-1861 during Dickinson’s most creative period of writing poetry. She produced hundreds of poems exploring themes of nature, spirituality, life, and death.
Part of Dickinson’s Nature Poetry
“A Bird Came Down the Walk” belongs to the nature poetry Dickinson produced depicting the flora and fauna around her. These insightful works showcase her talent for lyrical observation.
Published Posthumously in 1891
After Dickinson died, her sister Lavinia discovered a trove of over 1800 poems that the reclusive poet had never published. This poem appeared in the first volume of her complete Works published in 1891.
Influence of Romanticism
Dickinson’s reverence for nature reflects the spirit of Romanticism, which exalted the natural world, emotion, and individuality. Her unique voice put a New England spin on this influential 19th century movement.
Critical Reception
The poem has received mainly positive critical assessment:
Praise for Technical Mastery
Critics have widely praised Dickinson’s technical skill in the vivid imagery, rhyme, compressed language and effective use of devices like personification.
Appreciation of Insightful Observation
Scholars value the poem’s close observation of the bird’s activities and the insight it provides on how Dickinson engaged with the minutiae of nature around her.
Admiration of Emotional Resonance
The poem is admired for evoking a range of emotions – playfulness, curiosity, joy, awe – in response to a common nature scene made strange.
Recognition of Symbolic Significance
Critics highlight the symbolic value of the bird representing poetic inspiration, the human longing for freedom, the brevity of life, and other themes that give the poem deeper significance.
Critique of Isolation
A contrasting critique is that the speaker’s silent, isolated observation of the bird reflects Dickinson’s own loneliness and separation from society. But most scholars read the poem’s tone as meditative rather than melancholic.
Poem Text
Here is the full text of Emily Dickinson’s poem “A Bird Came Down the Walk”:
A Bird came down the walk—
He did not know I saw—
He bit an angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,
And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass—
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass—
He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad—
They looked like frightened beads, I thought—
He stirred his Velvet Head.
Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home—
Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam—
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.
Conclusion
In conclusion, “A Bird Came Down the Walk” exemplifies Emily Dickinson’s skill at capturing the mystery and beauty of ordinary natural encounters. Through vivid imagery, she brings the bird and its activities to life for the reader. Her keen observations, descriptive language, and use of techniques like personification create a magical, ephemeral moment out of a common backyard sighting. The brevity and transience of the bird’s visit take on deeper symbolic significance as well. Dickinson’s ability to see splendor and meaning in commonplace nature is characteristic of much of her poetry. The enduring popularity of this poem is testament to how well her artistry transports the reader into her world to share such fleeting glimpses of transcendence.