Summary
The uneasy speaker tentatively offers the bird a crumb. The bird spreads its wings and flies homeward. The speaker compares the bird to a boat rowing across the ocean and to butterflies drifting in the afternoon air.
Analysis
The early portions of the poem set up a complex reading of the bird. These latter stanzas show the speaker interacting with the bird as well as the bird's flight. This final moment, the bird's flight, shows yet another facet of its character. The speaker describes it as a sight of dignified grace and ease, while still refusing the reader a simple explanation of what the bird "means" as an image. Like the ones previous, the fourth and fifth stanza add to the depth of the bird's nature. In many regards, the bird's flight away from the speaker appears to be a rejection of her attempts to read it.
In the fourth stanza, the speaker becomes an active participant in the events of the poem: "Like one in danger, Cautious, / I offered him a Crumb." She remains cautious in light of what she has seen, but seems more sympathetic to the bird than she was previously. At the very least, she deems it worthy of this small token. The use of the phrase "like one in danger" as well as the adjective "cautious" makes plainly apparent the speaker's state of unease. Unclear as to whether or not the bird accepts the offer, the two lines that close out the stanza show the bird turning away from the speaker and flying home ("And he unrolled his feathers, / And rowed him softer Home -"). This move away from the speaker works on two levels in the poem. In a concrete sense, it is the bird choosing to leave the speaker behind. On a thematic level, it seems to be the bird escaping the poetic gaze of the speaker. By ascending into the air, it continues to resist the speaker's attempts to understand or categorize it. Fittingly, the speaker utilizes the words "unrolled" and "rowed" to describe the bird's flight as she marks the shift into more abstract diction. As the bird is leaving her behind, she is forced to change registers to describe it.
The first line of the final stanza completes the earlier image of the bird's flight. The bird is shown rowing "softer home / Than the oars divide the ocean, / Too silver for a seam." The speaker is comparing the bird's flight to a rowboat cutting across the surface of water. The bird's wings are compared to oars. The language of tailoring, from the third stanza, also recurs here with the depiction of the boat's wake as a silvery "seam." The speaker also compares the bird to "Butterflies, off Banks of Noon," stating that its flight is equally graceful. The final line ("Leap, plashless as they swim.") shows the bird as being as poised and elegant as these butterflies. These images are a mixture of different scenes. "leap" appears to be logically applied to the butterflies and the bird, but "swim" seems to be the remainder of the previous comparison with the rowboat. What these gestures represent as a whole is the shift into a new poetic register. Where before the speaker seemed concerned with journalistically chronicling the specific actions of the bird, she now uses figurative language and comparisons to capture an image (the bird's flight) that is beyond her grasp. it is a scene that is as much about the feeling of flying as it is about the image of the bird actually in flight. This moment both shows the bird in a moment of grace while also placing it outside the speaker's perspective. The speaker is unable to find a complete understanding of this animal and never settles on categorizing it as vicious, careful, or gracious. This final stanza functions as an acknowledgment that she is unable to fully comprehend the bird. She is left, instead, to watch it as it flies away from her, as mysterious as when she first encountered it.
While elements of the earlier style remain (capitalization, dashes) there is still a movement in tone. The speaker goes from fear to caution to outright respect. The poem ends on an unresolved note, as the bird flies home. While the speaker's feelings about it have changed over the course of the narrative, she still has not come to a satisfactory summary of what the bird is. She witnesses the bird devour a worm but also sees it allow a beetle to cross its path, nervously turn its head, and elegantly soar through the sky. This conflicting information makes it almost impossible for the speaker to form a central opinion of the bird. The abstract imagery of its flight seems like the only place where the poem can properly end. It makes no assumptions about what the bird's true nature is or what quality it is best assigned. It shows it in a properly unknowable light. The speaker can only observe it disappear into the clouds.
