16 pages • 32 minutes read
Emily DickinsonA Bird, came down the Walk
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1891A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Bird
The bird is the poem’s central symbol, representing the natural world in both its prosaic elements and in its beauties. The bird’s instinctive behavior makes it clear that it is an animal, one that can bite a worm “in halves” and then eat “the fellow, raw” (Lines 3-4) without much ado. Nevertheless, the bird also behaves in ways that are graceful and sometimes nearly mimic human behavior, as in the way it “came down the Walk” (Line 1) at the poem’s opening, as if using the manmade path the way a human would. In a similar manner, it “hopped sidewise to the Wall / To let a Beetle pass” (Lines 7-8) as if behaving with exaggerated courtesy. Finally, the bird’s flight back “Home” with motions “softer [. . .] / Than Oars divide the Ocean” (Lines 16-17) transform the bird into a symbol of nature’s grace and majesty, inspiring a moment of the sublime for the poem’s speaker.
Human-Animal Connection
The human-animal connection forms a central motif in the poem. The speaker is a foil, or contrasting character, to the bird. How the speaker in this poem sees the natural world reveals the direct role humans can play in the natural world and their part within it.
The speaker spends much of the early poem distancing themselves from the animal world. This distancing is most evident in the first stanza, where the speaker comments on how the bird ate his “fellow, raw” (Line 4). “[F]ellow” here suggests that the speaker views the bird and the worm it eats as kin, insofar as they are both animals. The speaker’s use of “raw” foregrounds the rawness of animal life compared to human civilization.
In a similar vein, the bird responds to the speaker with timidity and even fear, assessing whether or not the speaker poses a threat. This reinforces the idea that, just as the bird was a threat to the worm in the first stanza, so too is the human speaker a potential threat or predator to the bird. In offering the bird a “Crumb” in line 14, however, the speaker chooses to share a moment of companionship with the bird and admires the bird’s graceful flight as it wings its way back “Home” (Line 16) to its nest. The nuances of the dynamics between the speaker and the bird thus reflect the multifaceted bond that humans and animals can have with one another.
The Ocean
Though the speaker only mentions the ocean in the last stanza, it plays an important symbolic role throughout the poem. In contrast to the bird’s eating of the “Angle Worm” (Line 3), which showcases nature on a micro scale, the ocean symbolizes nature on a macro scale. The ocean is a symbol of the sublime (See: Themes). The ocean also suggests a liminal space between the ground both the speaker and the bird “Walk” (Line 1) on, and the sky.
The speaker uses a nautical simile to describe the bird’s movement through the air, suggesting that he is a liminal creature. The bird’s wings “row” (Line 16) him through the sky just as “Oars divide the Ocean” (Line 17) in helping humans navigate the waters, but the bird’s movements are far “softer” and more graceful than those achieved by humans. The sky, as something vast and blue, evokes the imagery of the ocean in the speaker’s mind, speaking to the vast majesty of the natural world and the speaker’s admiration of it.
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By Emily Dickinson
