"A Bird Came Down the Walk" Emily Dickinson 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 around-- 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. | There is something magical in the morbid mastery of emotion and immensity of creativity found in the poetic works of the extraordinary Emily Dickinson. Dickinson was a female hermit for the majority of her life: from her birth on the tenth of December, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts and throughout her childhood, to following her brief attendance of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and into old age(well 56 anyway), taking this into consideration it is only logical that the few people Dickinson did communicate with were of enormous importance to her and her compositions. These lucky few included a fellow she met on her way to Philadelphia, by the title of the Reverend Charles Wadsworth. He departed from her household for the west coast, apparently leaving Dickinson in a state of desolation, which many believe to have facilitated the bittersweet outpouring of poetry which followed. But Wadsworth whom Dickinson called her “closest earthly friend.” was only one of the unrequited loves readers attribute to Dickinson, because of her poems, others include Otis P. Lord, a Massachusetts Supreme Court judge, and Samuel Bowles, an editor of the Springfield Republican. However, even in her isolation Emily Dickinson was not only in steady correspondence with a selection of people she was also close to her family, who were intelligent and loving companions of Dickinson for her entire life, from her father an outspoken member of national politics, who even served as a member of Congress for a term, and her brother Austin, a law student who became an attorney and lived next door with his wife, Susan Gilbert, to her younger sister, Lavinia, whom she was accompanied by for the majority of her isolation, as Lavinia mimicked Emily’s reclusive lifestyle. For all the unique flair of Emily Dickinson’s work it admits roots in the poet’s love of the seventeenth-century English metaphysical poetry, her complex mixture of Calvinist, Orthodoxy, Conservatism( courtesy of her Puritan New England rearing), and ardent study of “The Book of Revelations”(which may have been a factor in the combination of chimera and fatalism found in her work. Dickinson’s admiration of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning is rumored to have extended her hanging a portrait of the iconic female poet above her bed. Although, now considered one of the acclaimed poets who established the originality of American Poetry, she was never publicly recognized during her own lifetime. Despite, her seemingly ceaseless flow of creative production, including enclosing poems in many of her letters to friends and acquaintances, it was not until 1890, four years after her death in 1886, that a volume of her work was finally published. Even then however, the piece was heavily edited, Dickinson’s little sister had discovered in her room forty carefully hand bound volumes containing nearly 1,800 poems, these “fascicles” as they were sometimes called were meticulously sewn together from pieces of stationery paper. Each page contained, a beautiful hand written final draft of one of Dickinson’s poems, they incorporated a variety of unusual dash-like marks of various sizes and directions, from large and horizontal to small and vertical. Nonetheless, the first publication of Dickinson’s work contained none of these fascinating quirks and the editors involved replaced her innovations with traditional aesthetics destroying Dickinson’s unique flair. The poems were taken out of order and their idiosyncrasies erased. It took almost another century for the poems to be published in their original state, when Ralph W. Franklin recovered the original copies and used the physical evidence left in smudge marks and needle punctures to restore the poems to their original states and order in "The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson"(Belknap Press, 1981). The sheer number of poems alone is enough to inspire respect for what Ralph W. Franklin accomplished, but to have pieced together works of such unusual complexity and rare punctuation is truly commendable, without Franklin we wouldn’t have the wonderfully, unconventional Emily Dickinson we know today. So, my gratitude to Emily Dickinson’s creative brilliance is given in part to Ralph W. Franklin’s determined dedication. As prolific as she was it no wonder she has appeared on this blog once already if you would like to read more about her please click the link below to read another analysis. |
The verse format of Emily Dickinson's poem, “A Bird Came Down the Walk,” is simple and traditional, her syllabic pattern is consistent and and predictably familiar. The poem is composed of five quatrains with almost identical syllabic like structure, save the occasional syllable more or less which is probably only hinting at a difference in pronunciation or increasing poetic tempo. The stanzas remain in the same almost balladic arrangement throughout: two lines of extended iambic pentameter( meaning there are six syllables as opposed to five) are followed by single line of iambic tetrameter( eight syllables) and a final line of extended iambic pentameter. Each line begins with an unaccented syllable meaning it disregards the last syllables of the preceding line and uses its own format initiating a brand-new thought and rhythm. This creates a very punctual feel, with strong independent lines. However, the strictness of the order through the first three stanzas is lost in the concluding two stances as the poetic structure decomposes; the theme and rhyme scheme also lose their organization at this point in the poem and a sense of scattered madness is achieved.
The rhyme scheme of “A Bird Came Down the Walk,” is classically cadenced beginning with all the deliberation and polite phonetic correspondences of a ballad. Dickinson's first two quatrains are rhymed with a familiar ABCB format, transparent and recognizable. “Saw” rhymes with “raw” and “grass” with “pass”. However, it would not seem that “around” rhymes with “head”. Certainly, it indeed does not, but it does carry echoes of solidarity in the repetition of the strong consonant sound of a “d”. This “half” or “slant” rhyme was a revolutionary technique for the time, it eliminated predictability and gave the poet more freedom. Dickinson’s use of slant rhyme marks a decomposition in the structure of her poem and continues into the final line, “crumb” sounding faintly reminiscent of “home” and “seam” just missing the ending ring of “swim”.
Nonetheless, the true uniqueness of Dickinson’s poetry is found in her remarkable use of punctuation and capitalization. Her seemingly spontaneous employment of hyphens and capitals, marks the meticulous emphasis that is brought to the thematic elements of her work. Creating deliberate and unusual pause causing the reader to slow down and study the passage in greater detail, similar to a game of “One of these is not like the others”. Capitols pop-out from the text adding an element of unexpected character to scattered nouns. Inanimate or vague passing subjects such as “the Walk”, an “Angleworm”, a “Dew”, “a convenient Grass”, “the Wall”, “a Beetle” or other passing elements become feeling personalities. Personified “Beads” are suddenly possessed the emotion of fear, “Cautious” becomes capable of independent thought, akin to the angel and devil upon one's shoulders. Yet, as this poem progresses quaint characterization becomes morbid images worthy of the deranged, suddenly the consumption of a “Crumb” is cannibalistic, “Oars” and the “Ocean” are the owners of independent psyches, logic is sacrificed in lieu of subtle alliteration, “Too silver for a seam,” “Butterflies” flit and flutter off “Banks” of “Noon”. Since when have “Butterflies” been of a single mind? Who are these “Banks of Noon”, are they more than imagined characters in a plotless fantasy? Emily Dickinson leaves behind the charming verses, so reminiscent of nursery rhymes with which she began, transforming her poem into a compilation of delusional ramblings, full of convoluted metaphors and disturbingly vivid imagery.
The theme of Emily Dickinson’s poem is difficult to discern as a single distinct certainty. It begins simply enough with the observation of a bird catching a worm, recorded with shall we say twisted exuberance, giving conscious life directly prior to death “-and ate the fellow, raw.” Although, the wording is vaguely troubling, the subject is mundane enough, yet suddenly our macabre robin is a practical gentlemen,
“And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass.”
not a single thought seems to be spared for the homicide in which he participated, as he drinks “Dew” with dainty elegance and courteously makes way for a “Beetle”. Is this passage a hint at the nonchalance of modern violence, a product of scarring isolation? A tribute to how someone unaware of their crime has been witnessed, “He did not know I saw; He bit an angleworm in halves” will act as though it had never even occurred. Yet, as the very next stanza alludes they will not be left unscarred,
“He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head”
their insouciance, merely a charade for a constant and relentless fear, they exist in ceaseless anxiety of discovery, the fourth stanza illustrates their madness, a fear of the cosmic power they feel must smite them eventually, in the guise of assistance or redemption. To be too terrified of prosecution to seek forgiveness, “Like one in danger; cautious, I offered him a crumb,”. Crazed by guilt and fearful of all surrounding, the bird has but one choice and that is to run, and instead of accepting an offer of kindness he flees: “And he unrolled his feathers and rowed him softer home.” But in this distorted fancy birds don’t fly they swim, not flapping but “rowing” their way home through waves of air or water it’s up to your own imagination. The final stanza explodes into life with reckless abandon throwing caution and consequence to the wind. The simple act of the bird’s “flight” becomes a miraculous occurrence as it parts the “Oceans” of air with the “Oars” it possesses instead of wings. But this feat before only attributed to Moses, is indistinguishable as the air, “Than oars divide the ocean, too silver for a seam,” no naked eye can see the currents it inflicts. The “silver” is the soundless and imperceptible air we breath as easy to move through as though it weren’t even there, this void through which the bird traverses is the unseen “seam” the wake of air through which we as living moving beings all pass. Miracles are not quite so miraculous when they are achieved in impeccable silence, with undetectable disturbance. For after all every butterfly off the banks in the afternoon, accomplishes this miracle constantly without ever giving the slightest impression of the effect, the consequences of their wingbeats are invisible in this vast sea of air. Is this a metaphor for our miniscule lives as human beings, our flights and fights, sins and virtues microscopic in in the grander picture, the effects of our actions indistinguishable from the kaleidoscopic currents of life and time surrounding us. We are only the “Butterflies, off the Banks of Noon, [who] leap, plashless, as they swim.” The consequences of the courses and events of our lives are impossible to witness. Is her composition a confirmation or rejection of the theory of “Butterfly Effect”( a portion of chaos theory in which impalpable and indiscernibly small occurrences will result in repercussions much larger or farther reaching than themselves in the nonlinear system of time)? It’s hard to tell. Is Dickinson condemning us to never be of any consequence in the cycles of our earth, regardless of our thoughts or actions. Or is she instead, assuring us of the sometimes hard to distinguish but nevertheless existent waves of motion we set into being.
Emily Dickinson’s “A Bird Came Down the Walk,” is a wild, yet oddly eloquent expression of the untamed through refined eyes. The wild nature of something as simple as a robin is set in sharp contrast to the domestic and dignified actions and vocabulary of civilized high society. “Angleworms are eaten “raw” as though it is possible they would be cooked, “Beetles” are made way for with impeccable etiquette and yet our hero is still consumed by the same fear that all that all untouched by man, must possess to survive, yet is this fear one shared in equal by cultivation. Do we in our luxuries fear the feral as greatly as the feral fears us? Whether, you take this poem to be an exaggeration of the differences between the rural and the cosmopolitan or a extended translation of the theory of “Butterfly Effect” it remains a beautiful and enigmatic expression of observations which cannot be anything but dream-like.