A Bird, came down the Walk -
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.
This poem juxtaposes predatory violence and pastoral beauty without arousing unease. The bird in stanza 1 is carnivory, halving the ‘Angle Worm’ without any hesitation, while the caesura in line 4 (‘the fellow, raw’) stresses the bird’s primitive nature. The lingering long vowels in ‘saw’ and ‘raw’ present how Dickinson preoccupies herself with the witness.
However in stanza 2, the speaker shows the aesthetic side of the bird. The overall image becomes pastoral, calm. The bird drinks a dew from a grass nearby to cleanse his predatory beck, before with decorum letting a beetle pass. In stanza 3, the speaker’s approach frightens the bird, which she personifies to present her speculation (‘frightened Beads, I thought’).
~
Stanza 4 then turns to the interaction between the bird and the speaker, starting with an ambiguous simile. Helen Vendler suggests that it can be the speaker, namely, Dickinson, who is ‘in danger’.
[T]his certainly accords best with Dickinson's comic side. So far, the poem has shown the encounter with ridiculous exaggeration, and the comedy is increased if the human being feels herself endangered by a Bird. After all, she saw him eat an Angle Worm. But perhaps she'll pass as unharmed as the Beetle did. Who knows? (Vendler, 158)
After receiving the crumb, the bird flies off, whose departure is compared to the rowing motion, with the sky being the waveless, seamless ‘Ocean’. The idea of getting on a boat (‘Oars divide the Ocean’) is laid out already in stanza 2 when things that catch the bird’s attention are compared to travellers of some sort (‘all abroad’). The final stanza transforms with a simile (‘than’) the sky into ‘the Ocean’ on which moonlight sheds. The aerial ocean has no wave (‘plashless’) as the animals flap their wing-ish oars. The image rubs off a tinge of 'immortality' (‘Banks of Noon’), as Sharon Cameron suggests (Cameron, 7). ‘Banks of Noon’ may be the clouds around the moon; or simply imaginative. Butterflies are metamorphosed into fish as they swim across the ocean-like sky, without causing noise and disturbance. ‘Plashless’ means ‘without a splash’. The sibilance in the final line (‘plashless’; ‘as’; ‘swim’) reinforces the silence, calmness of the poetic landscape.
Reference list
Helen Vendler. Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries (2010). Harvard University Press.
Sharon Cameron. Lyric Time (1981). John Hopkins University Press.