Key Features - Words and references
- angle-worm : think of anglers and the bait they use
- raw : emphasises the wildness of the bird
- from a grass : makes the action almost resemble the human action of drinking from a glass
- beads/velvet : the speaker describes the bird in terms of civilisation
- plashless : a less common form of splashless
- Written in five four-lined verses called quatrains (Dickinson uses iambic trimeter with occasional four-syllable lines).
- In Stanzas 1 – 3 the poet develops a sense of surprise, curiosity and even amusement at the bird’s behaviour.
- The last two stanzas the tone changes to one of awe and wonder at the magical beauty of the bird in flight.
- A loose ABCB rhyme scheme.
- The most remarkable feature of this poem is the imagery of its final stanza, in which Dickinson provides a breath-taking description of flying. Simply by offering two quick comparisons of flight and by using descriptions that would normally be associated with movement in water - rowing and swimming - she suggests the delicacy and fluidity of moving through air. The image of butterflies leaping "off Banks of Noon", splashlessly swimming through the sky, is a memorable one.
- Dickinson used common language in startling ways - a strategy called ‘defamiliarization’.