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Lecture 3 A Bird Came Down The Walk

- Main Theme: Observation of a bird's interaction with its environment and a human. - Three sentences: The poem describes the persona observing a bird as it finds food around a walk, drinks dew from grass, lets a beetle pass, and flies off. The bird eats a worm raw, drinks water, and hops to let an insect pass, showing the interconnectedness of nature. Through precise language and punctuation, the poem captures the bird's movements and the persona's detailed observation in a musical, lyrical style.

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B Amin
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179 views

Lecture 3 A Bird Came Down The Walk

- Main Theme: Observation of a bird's interaction with its environment and a human. - Three sentences: The poem describes the persona observing a bird as it finds food around a walk, drinks dew from grass, lets a beetle pass, and flies off. The bird eats a worm raw, drinks water, and hops to let an insect pass, showing the interconnectedness of nature. Through precise language and punctuation, the poem captures the bird's movements and the persona's detailed observation in a musical, lyrical style.

Uploaded by

B Amin
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Emily Dickinson

A Bird, came down the Walk – 


A Bird, came down the Walk – Like one in danger, Cautious,
He did not know I saw – I offered him a Crumb,
He bit an Angle Worm in halves And he unrolled his feathers, 
And ate the fellow, raw,  And rowed him softer Home –

And then, he drank a Dew Than Oars divide the Ocean,


From a convenient Grass – Too silver for a seam,
And then hopped sidewise to the Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon,
Wall Leap, plashless as they swim. 
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. – 
Summary/Overview
• Main Theme: Relationship of Man and Nature
• Simply put, an interaction b/w the poetic
persona and a bird, and the observation as the
bird finds food and takes flight
• Three elements : Structure, Form/Tone, Sound,
and Language
Structure
• a five stanza poem separated into quatrains (sets
of four lines)
• conforms to iambic trimeter
• each line contains three sets of two beats, first is
unstressed and the second stressed
• many pauses, through commas and hyphens:
give a lyrical feel to it
Form
• a loose rhyme scheme, with the pattern of ABCB
• a few half or slant rhymes in stanza three
A Bird, came down the Walk –
He did not know I saw –
He bit an Angle Worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw, 
 The personification of the Bird and the  ‘He’ again personifies the Bird
Worm shows the unease of the speaker,
as she portrays them as human beings,  ‘in halves’ and ‘raw’ shows the
maybe also to show the bird as a brutality of nature
representative of nature
 ‘fellow, raw,’ kind of ironic
 The constant pauses makes it sound
almost musical  ABCB rhyme scheme

 The commas before and after ‘raw’


emphasize the word even more
And then, he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass –
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass –
 ‘And then…And then’ shows the level
of detail of the persona’s observation
 The alliteration ‘drank a Dew’
makes nature seem even more  ‘convenient Grass….let a Beetle pass’
harmonious. shows how nature works in harmony
and synchrony
 The punctuation again gives a
melodious sound to the poem  ‘To let a Beetle pass-’ The Bird is
shown to spare the Beetle, unlike the
 ABCB rhyme scheme Worm, because it has already eaten.
Can be compared with the unending
greed of humans
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. 

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