Emily Dickinson

Of Being Is a Bird

poem 653

Of Being Is a Bird - meaning Summary

Existence Imagined as Flight

The poem compares existence to a featherlike bird carried by a gentle breeze across the heavens. Life is portrayed as effortless motion — soaring, shifting, and matching the clouds — indistinguishable from ordinary birds except for an inner, musical wake. That music, emitted "for Ecstasy of it," suggests a private, joyful consciousness that turns simple being into a celebratory, almost spiritual experience.

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Of Being is a Bird The likest to the Down An Easy Breeze do put afloat The General Heavens upon It soars and shifts and whirls And measures with the Clouds In easy even dazzling pace No different the Birds Except a Wake of Music Accompany their feet As did the Down emit a Tune For Ecstasy of it

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