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Emily DickinsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Birds in Dickinson’s poems represent everything from artistic voice to spiritual transcendence to physical freedom. In “If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking,” the robin, in its moment of need, provides the speaker with evidence of grace necessary for her salvation. Whether that salvation is spiritual or secular is not specified by the speaker. Dickinson’s love for and understanding of nature makes the gesture of restoring a bird to its nest a worthwhile effort on a practical, physical level. But reading the bird as a symbol of a fallen person, strayed from their personal path or from faith, endows the speaker with a bigger task and responsibility. Nests are also featured in other Dickinson poems such as “For Every Bird a Nest,” where a wren may be aspiring beyond her scope by seeking too high a bough, signifying “aristocracy.” The lark, meanwhile, builds her house on the ground without shame. If the robin in “If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking” has fallen, perhaps its nest had been too high, and the speaker of the poem can ease its heartbreak and help restore its faith.
By Emily Dickinson
A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson
A Clock stopped—
Emily Dickinson
A narrow Fellow in the Grass (1096)
Emily Dickinson
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Emily Dickinson
"Faith" is a fine invention
Emily Dickinson
Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson
Hope is a strange invention
Emily Dickinson
"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson
I Can Wade Grief
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
Emily Dickinson
I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
Emily Dickinson
If I should die
Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the fall
Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson
I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
Emily Dickinson
Success Is Counted Sweetest
Emily Dickinson
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson
The Only News I Know
Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a Book
Emily Dickinson