A Bird came down the Walk (328) - by Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

 

    A bird came down the walk:

    He did not know I saw;

    He bit an angle-worm 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.

 

“A Bird came down the Walk” was first published in 1891 in the second posthumous collection of Dickinson's poems. The poem has 5 quatrains composed in iambic trimeter with occasional four-syllable lines. The rhyme scheme is a loose abcb. In this poem, too, Dickinson uses what is popularly known as slant rhyme [saw-raw; grass-pass vs. abroad-head; crumb – home; seam - swim].The meter is broken up at intervals with long dashes and commas indicating short pauses which indicate lack of motion or moments of contemplation: He glanced with rapid eyes/ That hurried all abroad,—.

This poem is a classic example of Dickinson’s exceptional powers of observation and description. The poetic voice of the poem describes seeing a bird coming down a walk – a walk is a path leading to a house. With that description, the poetess elevates the bird to the status of a guest. This is further accentuated when the poetess chooses to refer to the bird with the pronoun “he” instead of the much common “it” and thereby anthropomorphizing the bird. However, in the 3^rd and 4^th lines she sees the bird doing something people usually do not do. He eats a worm raw – and her surprise and even revulsion is indicated by the use of a comma before the term “raw.”

According to Christian teaching God provides for creatures of nature; therefore, a drop of dew is conveniently placed for the bird to drink after its meal. That description also emphasizes how uncomplicated the bird’s life is in comparison to human life.  

The bird, once full, “hopped sidewise to the wall/ To let a beetle pass.” Unlike human beings, creatures of nature do not usually kill for fun. They more often than not respect the rights of their fellow creatures.  

In the 3^rd stanza the poetess thinks that the bird “glanced with rapid eyes/ That hurried all abroad” – the bird is observant of the world around it; it is in tune with it and it lives in the present. The poetess interprets the bird’s observant carefulness as fear. This is an example of the human tendency to reflect human feelings on a creature one has no connection with. This, the poetess acknowledges by using the qualification “I thought” at the end of the 3^rd line of the stanza.  

There is a sense of voyeurism in the voice’s description of the bird’s activities. The voice is observing the bird and had the bird known that it was being observed it would not have allowed the voice to catch it unawares at such a vulnerable moment.  The poetess is sensitive to the bird’s need for secrecy. “He did not know I saw,” she says in the 1^st stanza - By hiding the word “him” that should have come at the end of that line, the poetess hides bird’s presence from others. The poetess may even be trying to hide that she has been observing the bird from the bird, too.

In the 4^th stanza, the voice seems to have felt privileged to have seen what she has seen. Consequently, she makes the bird an offering. This is because human beings base their relationships on mutual give-and-take. In addition, this particular offering may have been made with the intention of taming this representative of nature. But what the voice offers is a crumb. The placement of the two terms (juxtaposition) “offer” and “crumbs” side by side brings out a paradoxical effect which is almost bathetic. We were told in the third line of the first stanza that the bird had bitten “an angle-worm in halves/ And ate the fellow[1], raw.” Firstly, there is such power and independence in this bird that finds its own food and consumes it with such gusto.  Such a creature would surely not accept a mere crumb – literal or figurative – as an offering from anyone! Secondly, even after seeing the bird in action, the voice seems to not have drawn the conclusion that it was most probably a carnivore. Moreover, the cautious way the bird moves about should have warned the voice that the bird, even if it were an omnivore, would not have accepted an offering from an unknown entity.

It takes a long time to build a relationship that is close enough for a wild animal to accept food from a human hand. We have hunted, poisoned, and tortured animals to such an extent, animals have learnt to be wary of us. This single act of the voice and the bird’s reaction to it show how alienated we have become physically, emotionally, and spiritually from the natural world and how much we crave for a closer connection with it. In that desire lays Dickinson’s link with the Romantic School of Poetry.

There is a sense of affronted majesty in the way the bird rejects the human offering and flies away: “And he unrolled his feathers/ And rowed him softer home.” In comparison to the bird's terrestrial movements and the movements of the cautious voice, there is such grace and harmony in the flight of the bird. In the 3^rd and 4^th lines of the 4^th stanza the poetess introduces a sustained metaphor which she continues in the 5^th stanza. The bird is seen as a sailing ship. When it stretches out its wings to take off, the action is compared to the unfurling of a sail. The guest, visiting done, returns home. Its wings are cutting through the air with such efficiency and economy of movement. The wings unlike the oars of a sailing ship that are manmade and therefore imperfect imitations of creations of nature which stirred up foam and “divided the ocean” cut through the air cleanly. In fact the flight of the bird is more perfect than butterflies leaping “off Banks of Noon” because the insects make “plashes”. By using these two comparisons the poet illustrates the seamlessness and fluidity of the bird's flight through the air.

According to Helen Vendler this poem attest to Dickinson's "cool eye, her unsparing factuality, her startling similes and metaphors, her psychological observations of herself and others, her capacity for showing herself mistaken, and her exquisite relish of natural beauty." Harold Bloom says that the bird displays a "complex mix of qualities: ferocity, fastidiousness, courtesy, fear, and grace." He further notes that the description of the bird's flight is that seen by the poet’s soul rather than her "finite eyes". Chuck Taylor states that the naturalistic description of a bird is also symbolic. According to him, the description of the bird’s flight suggests the ease with which a person’s soul reaches heaven.

 

Further reading:

 

"Success is Counted Sweetest" (1864)

"Because I could not stop for Death" (1890)

 "I taste a liquor never brewed" (1890)

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?" (1891)

"I like to see it lap the Miles" (1891)

"I heard a Fly buzz—when I died" (1896)

"There is a pain — so utter —" (1929)

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[1]  Dickinson uses the term fellow to refer to the worm