Poetry & Analysis
Selected Hummingbird Poems
Animal PoemsHumming-Bird
When the morning dawns, and the blest sun again
Lifts his red glories from the eastern main,
Then thro’ our woodbines, wet with glittering dews,
The flower-fed humming-bird his round pursues;
Sips, with inserted tube, the honey’d blooms,
And chirps his gratitude as round he roams;
While richest roses, tho’ in crimson drest,
Shrink from the splendor of his gorgeous breast.
What heavenly tints in mingling radiance fly,
Each rapid movement gives a different dye;
Like scales of burnish’d gold they dazzling show,
Now sink to shade — now like a furnace glow!
Overview Short Summary
Alexander Wilson’s “Humming-Bird” presents the bird at morning among dew, woodbine, roses, and honeyed flowers. The focus is on color, gratitude, and dazzling motion.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Morning joy: The bird appears with dawn and sunlight.
- Flower and nectar imagery: The hummingbird feeds from honeyed blooms.
- Radiant beauty: Its breast outshines crimson roses.
- Gratitude: The bird’s chirp is described as thankfulness.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is celebratory, admiring, and bright. The mood is fresh and joyful because the poem unfolds in morning light.
Interpretation Animal Symbolism
The hummingbird symbolizes radiant life, gratitude, and the beauty of nature in motion. It also represents the tiny creature whose brilliance rivals flowers.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Opening Lines
The poem begins at dawn, when the sun rises and the hummingbird starts its round through dew-wet woodbines.
Middle Lines
The bird sips honey from flowers and chirps gratitude as it roams.
Closing Lines
The poem focuses on the bird’s changing colors, which flash like burnished gold and fire.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
The poem uses rich visual imagery: red sunrise, glittering dews, honeyed blooms, crimson roses, golden scales, shade, and furnace glow. Personification appears when the bird chirps gratitude and roses shrink from its splendor.
Craft Literary Devices
- Personification: Roses shrink, and the bird chirps gratitude.
- Simile: The bird’s colors are compared to burnished gold.
- Imagery: Dawn, dew, flowers, and fiery color dominate the poem.
- Alliteration: Phrases such as “mingling radiance” support the musical quality.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem is written in rhymed couplets. Its formal structure gives order to the bird’s rapid movement.
To a Humming-Bird
Voyager on golden air,
Type of all that’s fleet and fair,
Incarnate gem,
Live diadem
Bird-beam of the summer day, —
Whither on your sunny way?
Loveliest of all lovely things,
Roses open to your wings;
Each gentle breast
Would give you rest;
Stay, forget lost Paradise,
Star-bird fallen from happy skies.
Vanished! Earth is not his home;
Onward, onward must he roam
Swift passion-thought,
In rapture wrought,
Issue of the soul’s desire,
Plumed with beauty and with fire.
Overview Short Summary
John Vance Cheney’s “To a Humming-Bird” addresses the bird as a golden voyager, a living gem, and a star-bird. The poem presents the hummingbird as beauty too swift and spiritual to remain on earth.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Beauty and flight: The hummingbird is a “live diadem” and “bird-beam.”
- Spiritual longing: The bird seems fallen from happy skies.
- Restlessness: It cannot stay but must roam onward.
- Passion and desire: The bird becomes a “swift passion-thought” of the soul.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is elevated, admiring, and lyrical. The mood is bright and spiritual because the bird seems almost heavenly.
Interpretation Animal Symbolism
The hummingbird symbolizes soul-desire, beauty, swiftness, and a joy that cannot be held. It is treated as a living jewel and a messenger from a higher realm.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Stanza 1
The speaker names the hummingbird as a golden voyager, gem, diadem, and summer bird-beam.
Stanza 2
Roses open to the bird and invite it to rest, but the poem suggests it belongs to a lost paradise.
Stanza 3
The bird vanishes and roams onward, becoming a symbol of passion, desire, beauty, and fire.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
The poem uses jewel, sky, rose, star, fire, and summer imagery. Personification appears when roses open their “gentle breast” to offer rest.
Craft Literary Devices
- Metaphor: The bird is a gem, diadem, star-bird, and passion-thought.
- Apostrophe: The speaker addresses the hummingbird directly.
- Personification: Roses offer rest to the bird.
- Repetition: “Onward, onward” emphasizes restless flight.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem uses three short lyrical stanzas. Its structure moves from praise, to invitation, to disappearance.
The Humming-Bird
Like thoughts that flit across the mind,
Leaving no lasting trace behind,
The humming-bird darts to and fro,
Comes, vanishes before we know.
While thoughts may be but airy things
That come and go on viewless wings,
Nor form nor substance e’en possess,
Nor number know, or more or less,
This leaves an image, well defined,
To be a picture of the mind;
Its tiny form and colors bright
In memory live, when lost to sight.
There oft it comes at evening’s hour,
To flutter still from flower to flower;
Then vanish midst the gathering shade,
Its momentary visit paid.
Overview Short Summary
Jones Very’s “The Humming-Bird” compares the bird to passing thoughts. Although it vanishes quickly, its tiny form and bright colors remain alive in memory.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Memory: The bird disappears but leaves a lasting inner image.
- Thought and motion: Its flight is compared to thoughts moving across the mind.
- Evening beauty: The bird appears at evening among flowers and shade.
- Fleeting presence: The poem emphasizes momentary visitation.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is meditative, gentle, and reflective. The mood is quiet because the poem connects the bird’s movement with thought and memory.
Interpretation Animal Symbolism
The hummingbird symbolizes fleeting thought, brief beauty, and memory that survives after the visible moment is gone.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Stanza 1
The hummingbird is compared to thoughts that move quickly and leave little trace.
Stanza 2
The poem explains that thoughts are airy and insubstantial, like invisible wings.
Stanza 3
Unlike abstract thoughts, the hummingbird leaves a clear image in memory through its color and form.
Stanza 4
The bird returns at evening, flutters among flowers, and vanishes into shade.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
The poem uses mental and natural imagery: flitting thoughts, viewless wings, tiny form, bright colors, flowers, evening, and gathering shade. Personification is limited, but memory is treated as holding the bird’s image.
Craft Literary Devices
- Simile: The bird is compared to thoughts across the mind.
- Contrast: Airy thoughts are contrasted with the bird’s visible image.
- Imagery: Evening flowers and shade create a reflective atmosphere.
- Symbolism: The hummingbird represents fleeting impressions remembered later.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem uses four rhymed quatrains. Its orderly structure contrasts with the hummingbird’s quick and vanishing movement.
The Humming-Bird
So small and fair;
A sun-dyed dew-drop born with wings.
‘Neath Salvia’s coral cup it swings,
And to the winded flower clings
As if grown there.
So neat and fair;
An artist’s dream of loveliness —
Its form charms thro’ a gauze-like dress
Of rapid wings, that one might guess
Was wrought of air.
So wise and fair;
A poet’s thought that lives by stealth,
From honeyed cups it drinks its health,
With too much joy for making wealth
To purchase care.
So true and fair;
Each change without affects its coat;
A fire bell blazes on its throat;
Yet still it chirps the one clear note
Blown everywhere!
So sweet and fair;
Its mellow hum hath magic powers.
To wake to life dead summer hours —
Fond memories fresh as fragrant flowers,
In winter bare.
Overview Short Summary
Ira Billman’s “The Humming-Bird” praises the bird as small, fair, wise, true, and sweet. The poem especially connects the hummingbird with memory, joy, and the power to revive summer even in winter.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Joy: The bird lives with “too much joy” for worldly care.
- Memory and healing: Its hum wakes dead summer hours and revives fond memories.
- Beauty: The bird is a winged dew-drop and artist’s dream.
- Magic of nature: The hum has almost supernatural emotional power.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is admiring, tender, and musical. The mood is sweet and nostalgic because the bird brings summer back through memory.
Interpretation Animal Symbolism
The hummingbird symbolizes joy, delicate beauty, and emotional renewal. Its hum becomes a healing sound that can restore warmth in a bare season.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Stanza 1
The bird is compared to a sun-dyed dew-drop with wings, clinging to flowers as if part of them.
Stanza 2
The poem presents the bird as an artist’s dream, almost made of air.
Stanzas 3–4
The bird is wise, joyful, true, and radiant, drinking from flowers and carrying fire at its throat.
Stanza 5
The final stanza gives the hummingbird’s hum magical power to revive summer memories in winter.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
The poem uses dew, sun, salvia, coral cup, gauze-like wings, honeyed cups, fire bell, hum, summer, and winter imagery. Personification appears in the bird’s wisdom, truth, and magical power.
Craft Literary Devices
- Repetition: Each stanza begins with a variation of “So…fair,” creating praise.
- Metaphor: The bird is a dew-drop, artist’s dream, and poet’s thought.
- Imagery: Flower and color imagery makes the poem vivid.
- Symbolism: The hum represents memory and renewal.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem uses repeated five-line stanzas. Its structure works like a series of praises, each adding a new quality to the hummingbird.
The Humming-Bird
There is a silence in this summer day,
And in the sweet, soft air no faintest sound
But gentle breezes passing on their way,
Just stirring phantom branches on the ground;
While in between the softly moving leaves,
Down to their shadows on the grass below,
The brilliant sunshine finds its way and weaves
A thousand patterns glancing to and fro.
A peace ineffable, a beauty rare
Holds human hearts with touch we know divine.
When, hush! — a little tumult in the air;
A rush of tiny wings, a something, fine
And frail, darting in fiery haste, all free
In every motion; scarce we’ve seen or heard
Ere it is gone! How can such swiftness be
Incarnate in an atom of a bird!
To know this mite, one instant poised in space,
Scarce tangible, yet seen, then vanishing
From out our ken, leaving no slightest trace!
Ah, whither gone, you glowing jewelled thing?
Before you came the very air seemed stilled;
More silent now because with wonder filled.
And a soft bass is heard
From the quick pinions of the humming-bird.
Overview Short Summary
Laura M. Marquand’s “The Humming-Bird” begins with a still summer day and then introduces the bird as a sudden “little tumult in the air.” The poem is about how a tiny creature can fill silence with wonder.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Summer stillness: The poem starts with quiet air, light, and shadows.
- Sudden wonder: The hummingbird disrupts calm with fiery speed.
- Fragility and power: The bird is fine and frail but dramatically alive.
- Spiritual beauty: The natural scene touches human hearts as something divine.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is reverent, amazed, and delicate. The mood is peaceful at first, then startled and wonder-filled.
Interpretation Animal Symbolism
The hummingbird symbolizes sudden joy entering stillness. It becomes a tiny but powerful sign that beauty can appear quickly and transform the whole atmosphere.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Stanza 1
The poem opens with silence, soft air, moving leaves, sunshine, shadows, and summer peace.
Stanza 2
The hummingbird enters as a rush of wings and fiery motion. Its speed amazes the speaker because so much life is packed into such a small body.
Final Lines
The poem ends by hearing the soft bass of the bird’s wings, making its movement a kind of music.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
The poem uses summer imagery of soft air, leaves, grass, shadows, sunshine, and tiny fiery wings. Personification appears when beauty holds human hearts and the air seems filled with wonder.
Craft Literary Devices
- Contrast: Silence contrasts with the bird’s sudden tumult.
- Imagery: Light, shadow, and wing-motion shape the poem.
- Rhetorical question: The speaker wonders how such speed can exist in such a small bird.
- Metaphor: The bird is called a “glowing jewelled thing.”
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem uses two main descriptive sections followed by a brief closing couplet. Its structure moves from stillness to motion to lingering wonder.
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