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.
======================================================
Poet: Emily Dickinson
Poem: 328. A Bird came down the Walk
Volume: Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Year: Published/Written in 1955
Comments:
By going through the poem, one discoves that dickinson has a extreme ability of illusrting the very strenuous issue in simple imagery of nature.This very nature symbolizes society full of malfunctions and corruption.In the first stanza the coming down of the bird symbolizes the second coming of jesus christ. and the worms symbolizes corrupted authority.and eventully the offering of crumb represents the offering of justice to the universe.
(by Johnatan Hinderburg from United Kingdom)
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2006-04-29 00:04:13 十字祭 (ALMOST THERE)
449
I died for Beauty -- but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining room --
He questioned softly "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty", I replied --
"And I -- for Truth -- Themself are One --
We Brethren, are", He said --
And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night --
We talked between the Rooms --
Until the Moss had reached our lips --
And covered up -- our names --
=====================================================
Poet: Emily Dickinson
Poem: 449. I died for Beauty -- but was scarce
Volume: Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Year: Published/Written in 1955
Poem of the Day: Feb 6 2004
Comments:
1. This poem is so beautiful. I believe there are two aspects of the poem you can deal with: The one that concentrates on her transitus into the afterlife and focuses on her death, and the one that deals with the parallel between truth and beauty and how both are significant to the true understanding and meaning of the poem... It is weird that the Dickinson would use the word “fail” as a metaphor for death. This is especially interesting and significant because when the narrator of the poem remarks that she “died for beauty” earlier in the poem, one would think she actually meant that she “lived” for beauty. Subsequently, she equates “living,” “dying” and “failing,” and does all these things for truth and beaut (two equivalent things). But why would Dickinson who loved the beauty and nature have two people who died for beauty and truth be nullified by the covering of the moss. Why aren't their deaths significant?
(by Wilson from United States)
2. it took me a while, this stuff is friggin confusing. i never thought to include truth and beauty in my analysis though, then again i've never heard of john keats. it never even ocurred to me that the poem went that deep, i just assumed she wrote because she was bored of staying in her parents house and having no life. i agree with whoever said that the speaker is a guy, but i was also thinking it could be an ugly girl (...i died for beauty...). the whole tomb thing threw me off for like half an hour, and i assumed it was a sort of egyptian-like tomb, where it's literally rooms with coffins in it. but after reading the last line a couple times i figurred out that 'tomb', in it's context, is grave, like with grass and tombstones. the moss covering the names gave that one away. i hate how she capitalizes everything, it makes irelevant things seem important.
(by aaron from United States)
3. The poem is about 2 people beating the hell out of eachothers very souls. They are both in a war with themselves. One lacks beauty, the other lacks truth, who will win this war? Find out next time at BullCrapComments.com
(by Bertha from New Zealand)
4. I am researching this poem for a project and I have interpreted it this way: This poem is basically about two men who have died each for one reason (truth, beauty). They were not particularly punished through death for their truth and beauty, but died unhappy because they were always thriving for these qualities and never achieved them. They call eachother brethren, not because they were particularly related, but because they both "failed" for similar reasons and were forgotten. This is just my interpretation of this poem.
(by sofia from United States)
Link:http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/emilydickinson/10401/comments
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2006-04-29 09:11:07 十字祭 (ALMOST THERE)
5. John Keats said 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
Beauty and truth are One, and only death can bring them together, into One. Death helps keep beauty and truth in their peaks, and to their eternity... Great minds think alike.
(by Sally from China)
6. to quest for beauty is to live
on life's wake
The other, a path for those
who wait,
and live and die for death's
sake
(by ENG Student from United States)
7. Dickinson expounds young Keats ( who died at the age of 25) intrigue with truth and beauty. there is a harmony and dis harmony in this equasion. which spurred the birth of this poem
Disharmony of Keats
Truth is beauty, beauty is truth
Can one be constant, the other vary
Still be equal to each other
Mystery of beauty, Miracle of truth
(by Shimon Weinroth from Israel)
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2006-04-29 09:25:24 十字祭 (ALMOST THERE)
712
Because I could not stop for Death --
He kindly stopped for me --
The Carriage held but just Ourselves --
And Immortality.
We slowly drove -- He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility --
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess -- in the Ring --
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain --
We passed the Setting Sun --
Or rather -- He passed Us --
The Dews drew quivering and chill --
For only Gossamer, my Gown --
My Tippet -- only Tulle --
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground --
The Roof was scarcely visible --
The Cornice -- in the Ground --
Since then -- 'tis Centuries -- and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity --
=============================================================
Poet: Emily Dickinson
Poem: 712. Because I could not stop for Death --
Volume: Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Year: Published/Written in 1955
Poem of the Day: Nov 10 2002
Comments:
1. I found that this is one of the greatest poems in american history. Emily Dickinson, portrayed death perfectly through a simple carriage ride. Although she did not have time for death, death kindly stopped for her. For someone of that time to think of that, is truly rare. Especially for a woman nonetheless. She strung the imagery together flawlessly. it was as if she was reminiscing the simple life, when she saw the school, young innocent children striving, and going to recess. I believe that she was traveling with death, and as she saw her life past by, but knew that there was another in death, thus immortality and eternity.
<by kasumi from Japan>
2. Rereading Dickinson's poems about DEATH showed me that death in all her poems is related to immortality.In death she does not see the end of life ;however she see the begining of iternity. In this poem she shows her wide imagination, and her cleverness to personified Death as a suitor...
<by Esaaf from Ukraine>
4. From ALLEN TATE
One of the perfect poems in English is “Because I could not stop for death,” and it exemplifies better than anything else [Emily Dickinson] wrote the special quality of her mind. . . . If the word great means anything in poetry, this poem is one of the greatest in the English language; it is flawless to the last detail. The rhythm charges with movement the pattern of suspended action back of the poem. Every image is precise and, moreover, not merely beautiful, but inextricably fused with the central idea. Every image extends and intensifies every other. The third stanza especially shows Miss Dickinson’s power to fuse, into a single order of perception, a heterogeneous series: the children, the grain, and the setting sun (time) have the same degree of credibility; the first subtly preparing for the last. The sharp gazing before grain instills into nature a kind of cold vitality of which the qualitative richness has infinite depth. The content of death in the poem eludes forever any explicit definition. He is a gentleman taking a lady out for a drive. But note the restraint that keeps the poet from carrying this so far that it is ludicrous and incredible; and note the subtly interfused erotic motive, which the idea of death has presented to every romantic poet, love being a symbol interchangeable with death. The terror of death is objectified through this figure of the genteel driver, who is made ironically to serve the end of Immortality. This is the heart of the poem: she has presented a typical Christian theme in all its final irresolution, without making any final statement about it. There is no solution to the problem; there can be only a statement of it in the full context of intellect and feeling. A construction of the human will, elaborated with all the abstracting powers of the mind, is put to the concrete test of experience: the idea of immortality is confronted with the fact of physical disintegration. We are not told what to think; we are told to look at the situation.
The framework of the poem is, in fact, the two abstractions, mortality and eternity, which are made to associate in perfect equality with the images: she sees the ideas. and thinks the perceptions. She did, of course, nothing of the sort; but we must use the logical distinctions, even to the extent of paradox. if we are to form any notion of this rare quality of mind. She could not in the proper sense think at all, and unless we prefer the feeble poetry of moral ideas that flourished in New England in the eighties, we must conclude that her intellectual deficiency contributed at least negatively to her great distinction. Miss Dickinson is probably the only Anglo-American poet of her century whose work exhibits the perfect literary situation— in which is possible the fusion of sensibility and thought. Unlike her contemporaries, she never succumbed to her ideas, to easy solutions, to her private desires.
. . . No poet could have invented the elements of “Because I could not stop for death”; only a great poet could have used them so perfectly. Miss Dickinson was a deep mind writing from a deep culture, and when she came to poetry, she came infallibly.
Infallibly, at her best; for no poet has ever been perfect, nor is Emily Dickinson. Her unsurpassed precision of statement is due to the directness with which the abstract framework of her thought acts upon its unorganized material. The two elements of her style, considered as point of view, are immortality, or the idea of permanence, and the physical process of death or decay. Her diction has two corresponding features: words of Latin or Greek origin and, sharply opposed to these, the concrete Saxon element. It is this verbal conflict that gives to her verse its high tension; it is not a device deliberately seized upon, but a feeling for language that senses out the two fundamental components of English and their metaphysical relation: the Latin for ideas and the Saxon for perceptions—the peculiar virtue of English as a poetic tongue. Only the great poets know how to use this advantage of our language.
<Min Yee from United States>
5. On "Because I could not stop for death" (712) is defintely a beautiful written poem. Though it is an experience with death, the imagery and the way, in which, Dicksinson describes this death experience is absolutly thought evoking. "Because I could not stop for Death-- he kindly stopped for me-- forces one into a reality check. When one's life clock runs out, there is no turning back. Hence, death is inevitable. Ironically, Dickison states in line two, He (death)"kiindly" stopped for me--. In most people psyche, death is veiwed as dark and inherently evil; however, Dickison's usage of "kindly" suggests that death is is not necessarily a bad thing. She proves this in lines 9-12 in a stream of consciousness form, revealing her past experinces while alive. "We passed school where children stove, At Recess--in the ring--We passed the fields of Grazing Grain--We passed the setting sun." Though wiered as this experience with death may seem, death and Emily are apparently having a romantic gathering in the spiritual world. Overall, the major theme of this poem is death, however, by Dickinson stating, "Because I could not stop death" reveals that at one's appointed time, it is defintely inevitable that the sting of death cannot be stopped.
Thank You!!!
<Joel Floyd @ FAMU -English Major from United States>
6. Emily Dickinson does not has any fear toward death. She exposes in her writing that it is a natural process, where maybe in the last hours or minutes of our lives we started thinking about basic experiences that everybody have passed by. In the first stanza she since to be struggling with the time. I mean, she is comparing the carriage with life in a sense of slowliness. We drive our carriage as fast as we want to. At the third stanza she compares school, recess and children with The Fields and a sunset. Obviously, that a huge difference. A place that you find noise, people laughing VS a place that is quiet and you might only heard the wind. The school might represent our young lives, the fields our passing through life and the sunset our oldness. Finally for centuries the horse has represent an animal of great value and I think she compares us with this kind, noble animal that with his head looking foward life as we should do, until our death kindly stopped for us., In a complete sense of Inmortality and Etermity.
<Janet Franco from United States>
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