Emily Dickinson

My Friend Must Be a Bird

My Friend Must Be a Bird - meaning Summary

A Paradoxical Companion

The speaker imagines a friend through swift, compressed images: a bird for its flight and a mortal for its vulnerability. The friend also carries "barbs" like a bee, suggesting capacity to wound as well as to fascinate. The poem presents admiration mixed with confusion; the friend is simultaneously free, fragile, and stinging, leaving the speaker intrigued but unsettled by this paradoxical companion.

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92 My friend must be a Bird Because it flies! Mortal, my friend must be, Because it dies! Barbs has it, like a Bee! Ah, curious friend! Thou puzzlest me!

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