Emily Dickinson

Within My Garden, Rides a Bird

poem 500

Within My Garden, Rides a Bird - meaning Summary

Garden Visitor Resolves Doubt

The poem records a quiet scene in which the speaker watches a small bird wheel through her garden, touching flowers without alighting. Its hovering, musical movements provoke a playful philosophical doubt about whether the garden is external or imagined. The speaker and her dog puzzle over reality, but the bird’s behavior resolves the question simply: the blossoms’ own vitality explains what they observe, an elegant, almost scientific reassurance.

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Within my Garden, rides a Bird Upon a single Wheel Whose spokes a dizzy Music make As ’twere a travelling Mill He never stops, but slackens Above the Ripest Rose Partakes without alighting And praises as he goes, Till every spice is tasted And then his Fairy Gig Reels in remoter atmospheres And I rejoin my Dog, And He and I, perplex us If positive, ’twere we Or bore the Garden in the Brain This Curiosity But He, the best Logician, Refers my clumsy eye To just vibrating Blossoms! An Exquisite Reply!

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