A Bird Came Down the Walk – Criticism 1

Emily Dickson, a great American poet, wrote “A Bird Came Diwn the Walk”. It is a famous thought provoking composition of natural beauty. The bird is also addressed as a human,especially a male that makes the poem more relatable. The poem speaks about a tiny bird that comes down to the eqrth to satisfy his hunger.It also illustrates how he reacts the himan connection with the natural world.
This poen is about the speaker’s interaction with a bird that comes down in search of food. The poem begims when the speaker scrutinizes a bird moving along the pathway. Unaware about yhe surrounding, the bird catches a worm, cut it into pieces, and devours it. Also he drinks dewdrops from the grass then slowly hops aside to let the beetle pass.The bird fearful looks around quickly with rapid eyes.Both the speaker and the bird are trying to surmount their fears because the bird is walking in a strange land and the narratoris on his path.The speaker gently offers him a crump but instead of taking, he unrolled his feathers and takes his flight back home. The speaker notices his departure and elegantly describes his casual walk.
The poem describes a bird that comes across thw poet in a garden. But the poet’s minute observation, the precision of her words and the freshness of metaphors make the poem uniquely her own.
A bird came across the poet in a garden pathway. The bird did not notice that the poet had seen him.
“He bit an angle-worm in halves”
And ate the fellow, raw”
These two lines suggest that the bird hit an angleworm and ate it and it also show the swiftness of the bird’s hitting and eating the worm. Having dined on the worm, the bird drank dew drops from nearby grass and yjen swiftly hopped sideways to a wall to give way to beetle. The poet’s acute observation of the whole scene is remarkable for its vividness amd clarity. Perhaps perching on the wall the bird glanced rapidly all around. His rapid eyes sparkled with fright and looked like beads. The expression “frightened beads” is very fresh and original.
“He stirred his velvet head”
here the fright of the bird is further attested by the stir of his velvet head. Here velvet head is very smooth so we can find that the poet looks the bird very closely.It appered like one in danger.
“And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home”
when the poet offered a crumb to the bird the bird unrolled its feather and softly rowed itself home. The word rowed is remarkable to describe the birds flight.
“Then oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam
Or butterflies,off banks of noon,
Leaps, plashless, as they swim”
This stanza is the most incridible feature of the poem is the imagery of flying away of bird.She compares the wings to the oars which rows the beautiful bird homewards. The bird is associated with a biat and the open blue sky to the ocena in the poem. It is like the ease and softness with which oars, while rowing, divide the ocean. It is like the splashless leap of butterflies in some afternoon, in some river. The wings of the bird are more silent while flying then the oars that divid3s movement of the butterfliea is very molten and smooth. The poet visualizes these butterflies swimming without any ripples and splash
In the end we can conculed that the poet observe the nature in a very minute way.