The Wind Tapped Like a Tired Man,
The Wind Tapped Like a Tired Man, - meaning Summary
Personified Gust as Visitor
The poem personifies wind as a polite but elusive visitor who taps, enters, and hovers in the speaker's home. Dickinson treats the gust as both human and insubstantial—tired, footless, boneless—emphasizing sound, motion, and fleeting presence. Sensory metaphors (humming-birds, billow, music in glass) convey its restless, insistent energy and delicate effects. The visit ends as it began: ephemeral and solitary, leaving the speaker alone once more.
Read Complete AnalysesThe wind tapped like a tired man, And like a host, ‘Come in,’ I boldly answered; entered then My residence within A rapid, footless guest, To offer whom a chair Were as impossible as hand A sofa to the air. No bone had he to bind him, His speech was like the push Of numerous humming-birds at once From a superior bush. His countenance a billow, His fingers, if he pass, Let go a music, as of tunes Blown tremulous in glass. He visited, still flitting; Then, like a timid man, Again he tapped- ‘t was flurriedly- And I became alone.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.