ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -The speaker describes once seeing a bird come down the walk, unaware that it was being watched. The bird ate an angleworm, then “drank a Dew / From a convenient Grass-, ” then hopped sideways to let a beetle pass by.

Detailed explanation-2: -Personification: Personification is to give human qualities to inanimate objects. For example, the bird is personified throughout the poem. The poet uses ‘he’ instead of ‘it’ in the following verses, ‘He bit an Angle Worm in halves’, ‘And he unrolled his feathers’, ‘And rowed him softer Home’.

Detailed explanation-3: -Metaphor is present in the third stanza. He stirred his Velvet Head. This is a metaphor because the narrator compares the bird’s head to velvet without the use of “like” or “as.” This emphasizes the texture of the bird’s head and creates an idea of softness.

Detailed explanation-4: -"A Bird came down the Walk” is a short poem by Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) that tells of the poet’s encounter with a worm-eating bird. The poem was first published in 1891 in the second collection of Dickinson’s poems.