Emily Dickinson

A bird is of all beings

A BIRD is of all beings

Likest to the dawn

Not 'like' but 'likest'—the most similar. Dickinson is ranking all creatures and putting birds at the top of the dawn-resemblance scale.

The likest to the dawn,
An easy breeze does put afloat
The general Heavens upon.

General Heavens upon

Strange syntax—'put afloat / The general Heavens upon' inverts normal word order. The bird doesn't float in heaven; it floats heaven itself, as if the sky is a light object.

It soars and shifts and whirls

Measures with the clouds

'Measures' suggests both comparing size and dancing in rhythm. The bird uses clouds as a yardstick or dance partner.

And measures with the clouds
In easy, ever dazzling pace,
No different the birds—
Except a wake of music

Wake of music

A 'wake' is the trail behind a boat. Birdsong becomes a physical trail left by their feet, not their beaks—Dickinson swaps the body part that makes sound.

Accompany their feet,

Should the Dawn emit

'Should' means 'if only'—she's wishing dawn made sound the way birds do. The bird improves on dawn by adding what dawn lacks.

As should the Dawn emit a tune
For ecstasy of it.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Repetition Problem

This poem repeats itself exactly—lines 1-12 are identical to lines 13-24. Either Dickinson wrote it twice deliberately, or an editor duplicated it by mistake. No manuscript survives to settle the question.

The repetition matters because it changes how you read the comparison. If intentional, the doubling mimics birdsong's repetitive patterns or the daily return of dawn. The poem becomes a loop, like the natural cycles it describes.

But it's probably an error. Dickinson often wrote variant versions of poems, and early editors (especially her first publishers in the 1890s) made frequent mistakes. The poem works better as a single twelve-line piece—compact, strange, complete.

Reversed Physics

Dickinson inverts the normal relationship between bird and sky. The breeze doesn't lift the bird—it uses the bird to 'put afloat / The general Heavens upon.' The bird becomes the agent; heaven becomes the object being moved. This is typical Dickinson physics: small things leverage large ones.

The word 'general' is key. Not 'the heavens' but 'the general Heavens'—as if there are specific heavens and this is the common-use version. Or 'general' as in military rank: the commanding sky. Either way, it's a strange adjective that makes you pause.

The final stanza flips the comparison again. The bird isn't just like dawn—it's better than dawn because it adds music. 'As should the Dawn emit a tune' uses 'should' in the old sense of 'if only' or 'would that.' Dickinson is saying dawn ought to make sound for its own joy ('ecstasy of it'), the way birds do. The bird improves on the natural phenomenon it resembles.