Practice Question

2. “The language of a poem is often that of one thing compared to another.” In the work of at least
two poets you have studied, explore how poets have made their subjects come alive through
different means of comparing them.

A Bird, came down the Walk - 

He did not know I saw -

He bit an Angle Worm 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 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. 

In this poem Emily Dickinson used a lot of verbs, adjectives to describe the bird. In my interpretation, this bird is like an only friend to her, she observe him close enough to know the details of what he is doing. It is a poem that recorded the birds every single detailed moves after Dickinson saw him. This poem has 5 stanzas, it has a weird rhyme scheme like most her poems. She used a lot of verbs like "glanced" "hopped" and adjectives like "convenient" "cautious", these in english literary analysis is called personification. Especially the adjectives, they give the bird the ability to think like humans, for example, "And then, he drank a Dew   From a convenient Grass -", the word "convenient" here shows that the bird can choos the grass that is convennient to him which we know that animals do not usually have that sense. These personification rhetorical device really bring the bird alive to the readers, it is like the bird is pumping out off the poem.