Emily Dickinson's "A Bird Came Down from the Boardwalk" and Percy Bysshe Shelley's "To a Skylark" both use the bird as a symbol of nature, Dickinson's poem being a violent and abrupt vision of the natural world, and Shelley's poem being more lethargic and the bird representing a high plain to which human experiences cannot compare. Both poems comment on man's relationship with nature, but even more so, particularly when it comes to Romantic poetry, nature can often be a metaphor for purity and the sublime; for God. Fabienne Moine states in her essay that in Romantic poetry, the speaker identifying with the bird is itself "a metaphor for artistic freedom, creativity, or spiritual fulfillment",1 and "To a Skylark" can in this light be interpreted as that of Shelley (or the speaker of the poem) the desire to transcend the earthly towards something more idealized, and the melancholy which arises from the realization that one might be incapable of doing so. In contrast, Dickinson's poem comments on the violence present in the natural world, how he "bit a corner worm in two"2, which contradicts the representation of nature present in Romantic poetry, then the poem further describes the intrusion that humans bring into the natural world. .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Indeed, there is a kind of ironic reversal in Emily Dickinson's poem; the human silent and still, watching the bird as it devours the worm, then when the human moves, it becomes a chaotic force and it is the bird that flies away gracefully, "a sweeter home" 3. Consider the violence described in the phrase “he ate the comrade raw”, just like the worm, the text is also raw. Here, the bird is not subject to the moral constraints of human society, and devouring the worm is only part of the natural order, or so one might say. But there is also an element of humanization here, especially when the bird jumps "sideways towards the wall to let a beetle pass." The way the line is written suggests a kind of politeness, as if the natural world observed in the poem is a parallel to our human society. This speaks to the pathetic fallacy and the theory that human traits are attributed to the natural world, which both Dickinson's and Shelley's poem do. Ryan S. Bayless expands on this further: "In the third stanza, the character continues to project her own humanity onto the bird, but these attempts are now tied to an apprehension and fear of the potential danger she unconsciously perceives in the bird. nature »4. The fears that the poetic character gives to the bird are not unfounded, for they have just seen the bird eat an entire worm, and yet the character does not seem to grasp the duality of nature and man in the way it eats the worm, yet lets the beetle pass, in reality the bird would only be thinking about its own need for survival, the bird is just a tool to comment on our own human fears and the chaotic nature of the existence, perhaps how precarious life is. It is common in poetry to use the pathetic fallacy, and Shelley does the same in her poem when the speaker ruminates on this invisible lark, commenting on the nature of her existence and whether she has "a love of its kind"5. The meaning of much of Shelley's descriptive verse has been attributed to Shelley's obsessive sense of ideal beauty." 'aromantic poetry having this ideal to “transcend common experience”7. It could be said that To A Skylark depicts man's frustration with his surroundings, considering the lines "You must consider things truer and deeper/than we mortals dream."8 which not only elevates the Lark to a certain omniscient position, but could also be read as a plea or cry against the world in general, the poet discouraged at not being able to live up to his lofty preconceptions about the world.ce what art should be, in fact he gestures to the bird to "teach us", and once again using a religious allegory he says "bird or sprite"9, thus indicating this ethereal nature of the animal . On a technical level, the harmonious character of this ode lends credence to the supernatural aspect of Skylark, which flows musically, as if in tune with the song of this mythical bird. The main contrast between the two poems seems to be the way nature is described; nature in Skylark is romanticized, a land with "golden lightning" and "rainbow clouds"10 while Dickinson's vision of nature is one of uncertainty and violence, the language of the third stanza reinforces it; the "quick eyes"11, this is not a quiet representation and perhaps it is an extension of human insecurities, both poems show the human need to entrust our emotions to other things, that whether they are alive or inanimate. The rhyme scheme and meter are also interesting. Playing on the aforementioned idea that humans are disrupting the natural order, consider how in the first two stanzas the rhyme scheme is calm, with the quatrain using a xaxa, "saw/raw" rhyme scheme. The hyphen in the third stanza occurs when the bird becomes aware of the human presence, and so the rhyme scheme becomes jarring, echoing the chaos and fear that humans cause the bird and, by extension, the natural kingdom as a whole. The final images of the poem "produce a deeper and more intuitive insight that completely breaks the egocentric human tendency to impose itself on what is observed"12, they also indicate the extent to which the bird is untamed and untouched by humanity, it resists the gaze of the observer. offers and flies away while retaining its elegance, its body “too silver for couture” preserving this poetic and pious description of the beauty of nature. Emily Dickson's "A Bird Came Down the Walk" and Percy Shelley's "To A Skylark" both analyze similar issues of the human condition through the use of metaphors, pathetic fallacies, and personification, but the manner how these objects are discussed differs, and the underlying tone is also different. Shelley adheres to the traditional Romantic sense that the beauty of the natural world is tinged with melancholy, and Emily Dickinson depicts the violence of the natural world as an extension of the human world, while also commenting on man's interference with nature and how the natural world the world can be both violent and graceful. Percy Shelley's poem is a traditional ode to nature, in keeping with the poetic tradition and themes of the poem; the Skylark as an idealized creation and as an earthly representation of the divine. Dickinson's poem subverts structure by echoing the poetic structure of the poem's themes, becoming more chaotic following human intrusion. Yet the bird flying away could also be a visual metaphor for the observer's inability to find "nature", or the divine, which would make it tonally and thematically closer to the poem of Shelley that at first glance, despite the contrast between violent nature and a peace that the