A Bird, came down the Walk

Dickinson’s poem offers both a matter-of-fact portrait of a bird’s animalistic behavior while also depicting with sympathy the dynamics between different species. In its emphasis on a small, localized ecosystem full of birds, worms, and beetles, Dickinson participates in the kind of ecological examination popular at the time, while expressing an attentiveness and admiration of nature’s workings. The state of nature in “A Bird, came down the Walk” has harmonious and disharmonious elements that result in a complex and comprehensive depiction of an ecosystem in an otherwise simple, compressed work.

The bird’s behavior is presented as both instinctive and animalistic, and yet capable of refinement and beauty. In the first stanza, the bird is looking for a meal: “He bit an Angle Worm in halves / And ate the fellow, raw” (Lines 3-4). The “Angle Worm,” while affectionately referred to as a “fellow” by the speaker, is nevertheless lower on the natural hierarchy and serves as a good food source for the bird, who is its predator. In the second stanza, the bird has more symbiotic and equal interactions with elements of its environment, as it “drank a Dew / From a convenient Grass” (Lines 5-6), leaving the grass unharmed, and then behaves with almost human-like civility towards the beetle in clearing space on the walk for it: “And then hopped sidewise to the Wall / To let a Beetle pass” (Lines 7-8). Such interactions suggest the ways in which the bird can dominate some life forms while treating others as on its level, conforming to natural hierarchies.

The human speaker, meanwhile, operates at a higher level in the hierarchy than the bird does, as the bird initially regards the speaker as a potential threat. The speaker’s observations in the first two stanzas, for example, rely on the bird “not know[ing]” (Line 2) that he is being watched. When the bird notices the speaker, its body language betrays its unease, with its “rapid eyes” (Line 9) “hurr[ying] all abroad” (Line 10) as if assessing how it could easily escape. Its eyes appear “like frightened Beads” (Line 11), at least in the speaker’s assessment (“I thought”), and it behaves “Like one in danger, Cautious” (Line 13). The speaker’s offering of a “Crumb” (Line 14) attempts to establish a more equal and unthreatening dynamic between the two, but regardless of whether the bird accepts the crumb or not, it then immediately flies away “Home” (Line 16), reinforcing the sense that the hierarchies of nature are only momentarily superseded.

The speaker, in showing how a human interacts closely with the natural world, resists conventional notions of humans being detached from nature. Instead, the speaker exists as part of the larger state of nature, alongside the bird, the beetle, and the halved worm, suggesting that humans have their own role to play in nature’s hierarchies instead of dwelling apart from them.