Classics and the Western Canon discussion

For this week’s interim read, here are three very different poems about birds by Emily Dickinson, Lord Tennyson, and Robert Frost. Each poem uses a different form — quatrains for Emily Dickinson, tercets for Lord Tennyson, and a sonnet for Robert Frost. Some questions to consider — how does each poem describe their subject? Is the bird the real subject of the poem? Is the nature described in the poem domesticated or wild? Do you have favorite lines or phrases?

A Bird Came Down the Walk - (359)
by Emily Dickinson

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.

To hear “A Bird Came Down the Walk” read: https://youtu.be/70Bm5MPlKv8?si=oQZUG...

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The Eagle
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

To hear “The Eagle” read: https://youtu.be/F4P1HVsLO-I?si=CtH1v...

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The Oven Bird
by Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

You can see a picture and hear the song of an ovenbird here: https://youtu.be/gj_q3rpHF6g?si=ceBJJ...

To hear “The Ovenbird” read by Robert Frost: https://youtu.be/h9htTt5KH7w?si=vTzoz...

This is a perfect comma
A Bird, came down the Walk -

Tennyson’s poem is my favorite, it’s short but still filled with powerful imagery. It reminds me of the eagles from LOTR. “The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls” is the most interesting line to me because neither “wrinkled” nor “crawls” are typical words to describe the sea.

I like how Dickinson depicts the bird’s movements. I like the lines, “And he unrolled his feathers, / And rowed him softer Home.” I think her poem is the only one that almost exclusively focuses on the bird. Tennyson’s seems to focus as much on the environment as the eagle, and Frost’s poem seems to be the poem that is least about a bird and more so about the deeper meaning of fading beauty and the passing of time.