Emily Dickinson – Page 4 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘A Bird came down the Walk’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Bird came down the Walk’ focuses on a popular theme of Emily Dickinson’s poems: animals. As ever, she looks at them in her own way, offering an idiosyncratic perspective on the bird, in this poem.

A Bird came down the Walk—
He did not know I saw—
He bit an Angleworm 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 around—

‘Grief is a Mouse’: A Poem by Emily Dickinson

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Grief is a Mouse’ by Emily Dickinson (1830-86) explores a range of metaphors for grief, including the idea of grief as a mouse, which ‘chooses Wainscot in the Breast / For His Shy House’. The idea is that grief is deeply felt, but hidden away: like a mouse in the wainscot, we are aware of it continually, but we never (or seldom) see it.

Grief is a Mouse—
And chooses Wainscot in the Breast
For His Shy House—
And baffles quest—

‘The Loneliness One dare not sound’: A Poem by Emily Dickinson

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Emily Dickinson (1830-86) wrote powerfully about loneliness and solitude, and perhaps nowhere more movingly than ‘The Loneliness One dare not sound’, a poem about a loneliness so profound that we can’t even bring ourselves to confront it for fear of being overwhelmed. This loneliness is ‘The Horror not to be surveyed — / But skirted in the Dark — / With Consciousness suspended — / And Being under Lock’.

The Loneliness One dare not sound—
And would as soon surmise
As in its Grave go plumbing
To ascertain the size—

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘New Feet Within My Garden Go’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Barely any of the hundreds of poems Emily Dickinson wrote were published during her lifetime, and indeed, while she was alive, she was far better known as a gardener than a poet.

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘If you were coming in the fall’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘If you were coming in the Fall…’ The key word is ‘If’. Some of the best love poems are poems addressed to an absent beloved. George MacDonald wrote a very short poem, ‘The Shortest and Sweetest of Songs’, comprising just two short words of longing: ‘Come / Home’. As the double meaning of the word ‘want’ (both ‘desire’ and ‘lack’) illustrates, we want what we can’t have.