Question

comments on the interaction between the narrator and the bird in the poem a bird came from down the walk

Answer 1

Emily Dickinson keenly depicts the bird as it eats a worm, pecks at the grass, hops by a beetle, and glances around fearfully. As a natural creature frightened by the speaker into flying away, the bird becomes an emblem for the quick, lively, ungraspable wild essence that distances nature from the human beings who desire to appropriate or tame it. But the most remarkable feature of this poem is the imagery of its final stanza, in which Dickinson provides one of the most breath-taking descriptions of flying in all of poetry. Simply by offering two quick comparisons of flight and by using aquatic motion (rowing and swimming), she evokes the delicacy and fluidity of moving through air. The image of butterflies leaping “off Banks of Noon,” splashlessly swimming though the sky, is one of the most memorable in all Dickinson’s writing.

Answer 2

Answer:

The speaker describes once seeing a bird come down the walk, ignorant that it was being watched. The bird ate an angleworm, then "drank a Dew/From a convenient Grass-", then hopped sideways to let a beetle pass by. The bird’s frightened, bead-like eyes glanced all around. Cautiously, the speaker offered him "a Crumb", but the bird "unrolled his feathers" and flew away - as though rowing in the water, but with a grace gentler than that with which "Oars divide the ocean" or butterflies leap "off Banks of Noon"; the bird appeared to swim without spattering.

Explanation:

The speaker describes once seeing a bird come down the walk, ignorant that it was being watched. The bird ate an angleworm, then "drank a Dew/From a convenient Grass-", then hopped sideways to let a beetle pass by. The bird’s frightened, bead-like eyes glanced all around. Cautiously, the speaker offered him "a Crumb", but the bird "unrolled his feathers" and flew away - as though rowing in the water, but with a grace gentler than that with which "Oars divide the ocean" or butterflies leap "off Banks of Noon"; the bird appeared to swim without spattering.

Emily Dickinson’s life demonstrates that it is not obligatory to travel generally or lead a life full of Romantic grandeur and utmost drama in order to write great poetry. In this poem, the simple skill of watching a bird hop down a path allows her to reveal her remarkable poetic powers of monitoring and description. Dickinson keenly portrays the bird as it eats a worm, pecks at the grass, hops by a beetle, and glimpses around fearfully. As a natural creature frightened by the speaker into flying away, the bird becomes an emblem for the quick, lively, impenetrable wild essence that distances nature from the human beings who wish to appropriate or tame it.

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