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).