Poetry & Analysis
Selected Hummingbird Poems
Animal PoemsThe Humming-Bird
Emerald-plumèd, ruby-throated,
Flashing like a fair star
Where the humid, dew-becoated,
Sun-illumined blossoms are —
See the fleet humming-bird!
Hark to his humming, heard
Loud as the whirr of a fairy king’s car!
Sightliest, sprightliest, lightest, and brightest one,
Child of the summer sun,
Shining afar!
Brave little humming-bird!
Every eye blesses thee;
Sunlight caresses thee,
Forest and field are the fairest for thee,
Blooms, at thy coming stirred,
Bend on each brittle stem,
Nod to the little gem,
Bow to the humming-bird, frolic and free.
Now around the woodbine hovering
Now the morning-glory covering,
Now the honeysuckle sipping,
Now the sweet clematis tipping,
Now into the bluebell dipping;
Hither, thither, flashing, bright’ning,
Like a streak of emerald lightning;
Round the box, with milk-white phlox;
Round the fragrant four-o’clocks;
O’er the crimson quamoclit,
Lightly dost thou wheel and flit;
Into each tubèd throat
Dives little Ruby-throat.
Bright-glowing airy thing,
Light-going fairy thing,
Not the grand lyre-bird
Rivals thee, splendid one! —
Fairy-attended one
Green-coated fire-bird!
Shiniest fragile one,
Tiniest agile one,
Falcon and eagle tremble before thee!
Dim is the regal peacock and lory,
And the pheasant, iridescent,
Pales before the gleam and glory
Of the jewel-change incessant
When the sun is streaming o’er thee!
Hear thy soft humming,
Like a sylph’s drumming!
Overview Short Summary
This anonymous poem is a long celebration of the hummingbird’s color, light, bravery, and movement among flowers. It presents the bird as emerald, ruby, fairy-like, and brighter than larger birds.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Beauty and color: Emerald, ruby, crimson, milk-white, and green create jewel imagery.
- Flower world: The hummingbird moves through woodbine, morning-glory, honeysuckle, clematis, bluebell, and phlox.
- Tiny courage: The poem calls the bird brave and imagines larger birds humbled by its brilliance.
- Joyful motion: The bird wheels, flits, dips, flashes, and hums.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is celebratory, admiring, and exuberant. The mood is bright and joyful because the poem is crowded with color and motion.
Interpretation Animal Symbolism
The hummingbird symbolizes radiant joy, fragile courage, and the glory of small life. Its tiny body becomes a living jewel that transforms the garden.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Stanza 1
The poem introduces the hummingbird through emerald feathers, ruby throat, dew-covered blossoms, and fairy-like humming.
Stanza 2
The bird moves through many flowers, stirring blooms and flashing like emerald lightning.
Stanza 3
The poem calls the bird a fairy thing and fire-bird, then claims even grander birds pale before its changing jewel-colors.
Final Lines
The poem ends with the soft hum compared to a sylph’s drumming.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
The poem uses rich visual and floral imagery: emerald plumage, ruby throat, dew, blossoms, woodbine, morning-glory, honeysuckle, bluebell, and fairy fire. Personification appears when sunlight caresses the bird and flowers bow to it.
Craft Literary Devices
- Simile: The bird flashes like a star and emerald lightning.
- Personification: Blooms bend and bow to the bird.
- Imagery: Color and flower imagery dominate the poem.
- Alliteration: Phrases like “sightliest, sprightliest” create musical praise.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem uses long, energetic stanzas with varied rhythm. Its structure follows the bird’s movement through many flowers and images.
A Humming-Bird
Somewhere I’ve seen thee, strange sprite,
Somewhere I’ve known thee ere now,
Among the wild broods of the night
That nest on the Morphean bough!
Thou with a silent throat
Dost busily rifle all blooms;
O flitter-winged bandit, thy note
Is the bee’s song shed from thy plumes!
Whisper those things in my ear,
That thou art so ready to tell
To creatures too heedless to hear, —
The lily, the foxglove’s bell!
Aha! is it so? — By these eyes,
Prospero’s servant I see, —
Ariel clad in the guise
Of a humming-bird lightsome and free!
Overview Short Summary
Edith Thomas’s “A Humming-Bird” presents the bird as a strange sprite, a flitter-winged bandit, and finally Ariel in hummingbird form. The poem turns the bird into a magical messenger.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Magic and dream: The bird belongs to sprite, dream, and fairy-like imagery.
- Flower secrets: It speaks to lilies and foxgloves in a language humans cannot hear.
- Freedom: The hummingbird is lightsome, free, and airy.
- Literary imagination: The poem links the bird to Ariel from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is enchanted, curious, and playful. The mood is magical because the hummingbird seems to cross between nature and fantasy.
Interpretation Animal Symbolism
The hummingbird symbolizes imagination, hidden messages, and airy freedom. It becomes a spirit of flowers and dream rather than an ordinary bird.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Stanza 1
The speaker feels the hummingbird is familiar from some dreamlike realm.
Stanza 2
The bird is called a silent-throated bandit who rifles flowers and carries a bee-like song in its wings.
Stanza 3
The speaker asks the bird to whisper what it tells the flowers.
Stanza 4
The poem ends by identifying the bird with Ariel, Shakespeare’s airy spirit.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
The poem uses dream imagery, sprite imagery, flowers, lilies, foxglove bells, bee-song, and Ariel. Personification appears when the bird is asked to whisper secrets.
Craft Literary Devices
- Allusion: Ariel and Prospero refer to Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
- Metaphor: The bird is a sprite, bandit, and Ariel-like spirit.
- Apostrophe: The speaker addresses the bird directly.
- Imagery: Lily and foxglove images create a delicate flower world.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem uses four rhymed quatrains. Its structure moves from recognition, to description, to request, to imaginative revelation.
Humming-Bird
Thou tiny spirit of the air,
With sylph-like motion, glad and free;
Who can thy meteor presence spare,
Whose childhood passed near thee?
For near our door thou lov’st to dip
Thy bill in the bignonia’s bloom
And of its nectar juices sip
‘Mid summer’s choice perfume.
Overview Short Summary
T. A. Conrad’s “Humming-Bird” is a short poem that remembers the bird near the door, dipping into bignonia blossoms. The speaker connects the hummingbird with childhood, summer, and glad motion.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Childhood memory: The bird is linked to childhood experience.
- Joyful motion: Its movement is sylph-like, free, and meteor-like.
- Flower and nectar: The hummingbird feeds from bignonia bloom.
- Home and nature: The bird appears close to the speaker’s door.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is affectionate, nostalgic, and admiring. The mood is light and summery because the bird is remembered with perfume and flowers.
Interpretation Animal Symbolism
The hummingbird symbolizes childhood wonder, summer happiness, and a delicate spirit of the air.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Single Stanza
The speaker addresses the hummingbird as a tiny spirit of the air. The poem remembers its free motion and its habit of sipping nectar from flowers near the home.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
The poem uses imagery of air, sylph-like motion, meteor presence, bignonia bloom, nectar, and summer perfume. Personification appears in the bird as a spirit-like presence.
Craft Literary Devices
- Apostrophe: The speaker addresses the hummingbird directly.
- Metaphor: The bird is a “tiny spirit of the air.”
- Simile: Its motion is described as sylph-like.
- Imagery: Flower and perfume images create a summer setting.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem is a brief lyric stanza. Its short structure suits short hummingbird poem and hummingbird poem for card intent.
The Humming-Bird
Poised in a sheeny mist
Of the dust of bloom,
Clasped to the poppy’s breast and kissed,
Baptized in violet perfume
From foot to plume!
Zephyr loves thy wings
Above all lovable things,
And brings them gifts with rapturous murmurings:
Thine is the golden reach of blooming hours;
Spirit of flowers!
Music follows thee,
And, continually,
Thy life is changed and sweetened happily,
Having no more than roseleaf shade of gloom,
O bird of bloom!
Thou art a wingèd thought
Of tropical hours,
With all the tropic’s rare bloom-splendor fraught,
Surcharged with beauty’s indefinable powers,
Angel of flowers!
Overview Short Summary
Maurice Thompson’s “The Humming-Bird” is a lush flower-poem that presents the bird as a spirit, angel, and winged thought of tropical beauty.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Flower intimacy: The bird is clasped, kissed, and perfumed by flowers.
- Love of nature: Zephyr loves the bird’s wings and brings gifts.
- Joy and music: Music follows the hummingbird.
- Spiritual beauty: The bird becomes an “Angel of flowers.”
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is lush, adoring, and lyrical. The mood is fragrant and joyful because the bird lives inside a world of bloom, perfume, and music.
Interpretation Animal Symbolism
The hummingbird symbolizes the spirit of flowers, tropical beauty, and delicate happiness. It is treated almost like a tiny angel of the garden.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Stanza 1
The bird is suspended in the mist of bloom, kissed by the poppy and baptized in violet perfume.
Stanza 2
Zephyr, the west wind, is personified as loving the bird’s wings and bringing gifts.
Stanza 3
The bird’s life is filled with music and only the lightest shadow of gloom.
Stanza 4
The poem ends by calling the hummingbird a winged thought and angel of flowers.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
The poem uses flower, perfume, wind, music, tropical, and angel imagery. Personification appears in Zephyr loving the wings and bringing gifts.
Craft Literary Devices
- Personification: Zephyr loves and brings gifts.
- Metaphor: The bird is a spirit, winged thought, and angel of flowers.
- Imagery: Bloom, poppy, violet perfume, and tropical hours create lush sensory richness.
- Apostrophe: The speaker addresses the hummingbird directly.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem uses four short stanzas with repeated exclamatory endings. Its structure builds praise through a sequence of flower-spiritual images.
The Humming Bird
Tell me, O Rose, what thing it is
That now appears, now vanishes?
Surely it took its fire-green hue
From daybreaks that it glittered through;
Quick, for this sparkle of the dawn
Glints through the garden and is gone!
What was the message, Rose, what word:
Delight foretold, or hope deferred?
Overview Short Summary
Edwin Markham’s “The Humming Bird” presents the bird as a sparkle of dawn that appears and vanishes in the garden. The speaker asks the rose what message the bird carried: delight or deferred hope.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Hope: The poem directly asks whether the hummingbird foretells delight or hope deferred.
- Ephemeral beauty: The bird appears and vanishes quickly.
- Garden symbolism: The speaker asks the rose to interpret the bird’s meaning.
- Light and color: The bird is linked with dawn and fire-green brilliance.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is questioning, lyrical, and wonder-filled. The mood is delicate and expectant because the bird seems to carry a hidden message.
Interpretation Animal Symbolism
The hummingbird symbolizes a brief sign of hope, joy, or emotional uncertainty. Its quick passage makes the speaker search for meaning.
Close Reading Stanza-by-Stanza Explanation
Single Stanza
The speaker addresses the rose and asks what the hummingbird is. The bird appears, glitters through the garden, disappears, and leaves behind a question about hope and delight.
Literary Technique Imagery and Personification
The poem uses imagery of rose, fire-green color, dawn sparkle, garden, message, delight, and hope. Personification appears because the rose is asked to answer.
Craft Literary Devices
- Apostrophe: The speaker addresses the rose.
- Rhetorical questions: The poem is built on questions about meaning.
- Imagery: Dawn and fire-green color create brightness.
- Symbolism: The hummingbird becomes a messenger of hope or deferred desire.
Poetic Form Rhyme Scheme and Structure
The poem is a short single stanza of rhymed couplets. Its compact structure suits hummingbird poem about hope and short hummingbird poem searches.
Significance Why This Poem Matters
This poem directly supports hummingbird poem about hope because it asks whether the bird’s arrival means delight or delayed hope.
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