A Bird came down the Walk

He glanced with rapid eyes, That hurried all abroad - They looked like frightened Beads, I thought, He stirred his Velvet Head.

Than Oars divide the Ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon, Leap, plashless as they swim.

He glanced with rapid eyes That hurried all abroad,— They looked like frightened beads, I thought; He stirred his velvet head

Vendler notes that the poem typifies Dickinson's "cool eye, her unsparing factuality, her startling similes and metaphors, her psychological observations of herself and others, her capacity for showing herself mistaken, and her exquisite relish of natural beauty".

The version she sent to her literary mentor Thomas Wentworth Higginson has no punctuation after "Head" and a period after the word "Cautious".