Mary Oliver

As for life,
I’m humbled,
I’m without words
sufficient to say

how it has been hard as flint,

and soft as a spring pond,
both of these
and over and over,

and long pale afternoons besides,

and so many mysteries
beautiful as eggs in a nest,
still unhatched

though warm and watched over

by something I have never seen—
a tree angel, perhaps,
or a ghost of holiness.

Every day I walk out into the world

to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
It suffices, it is all comfort—
along with human love,

dog love, water love, little-serpent love,

sunburst love, or love for that smallest of
birds
flying among the scarlet flowers.
There is hardly time to think about

stopping, and lying down at last

to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and
become forever,

and we will pretend to melt away into the

leaves.
As for death,
I can’t wait to be the hummingbird,
can you?

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Dissecting the Hummingbird’s Egg
By Theodore Eftimiades
03/09/10
Professor Francine Jamin

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 The structure and symbolism in this poem masterfully conveys ideas of life as a single

entity, the single life as a fragment of the world around it, and what exists beyond the

relationship between life and its greater whole.

Literally, the story is carried by a convoluted, unconnected, progression of thought

and a series of expressions of sentiments. The author opens the poem with a statement

regarding life. The author states that life is insufficiently explainable through words and that

each individual’s life follows a cycle consisting of contrasting periods of time defined by

either being “hard as flint” or “soft as a spring pond.” The author then shifts to speaking of

the mysteries of life which are as “beautiful as eggs in a nest.” It is mentioned that these eggs

are unhatched, but warm, implying that they have life within them and will, at some point,

hatch. The eggs are being watched by what the author characterizes as either some sort of

“tree angel” or “a ghost of holiness.” The author proceeds to express that dazzle and

reflection are induced in him/her by the world. He/she then explores the instances of love, in

life which are comforting. Following this is a remonstration of the insufficient time there is

in life to consider death and following that is a comparison of death to the overflowing of a

pond. The author speaks fondly of the point in time at which he/she will become the

overflowing pond and describes it as the time in which he/she will become the hummingbird.

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 Apart from the literal story, which really only gives the audience an elementary

understanding of the concepts in the poem, the structure of poem introduces the author’s

ideas. The structure reveals a foundational and dynamic relationship between the single and

the whole. The poem consists of four line stanzas. These four line stanzas are separated

artificially as there is no punctuation that would indicate the end of a sentence until the very

end of the poem. This means that while the stanzas are separated by space, grammatically,

they form a single sentence; thus, the stanzas must always be examined as a series of

individual, complete, statements and also as fragments of a larger idea.

Each four-line stanza represents what was referred to as either a soft or a hard time.

Remember that the author said that life consisted of a cycle of either hard or soft times. When

the poem is flipped horizontally, each four line stanza follows either a rising or a falling

pattern. And so, if each stanza is considered as a period in one single life-cycle, then the

stanzas, considered as a whole, represent a living

organism’s progression from life to death. The overall

structure of the poem supports this theory.

As is depicted to the right, the poem follows the

progression of a traditional plot line diagram. There is a gradual clime to the climax, and then

a sudden drop to the finishing point; such is also the progression of life. As an organism ages,

it is perpetually gaining knowledge and growing, until, all of a sudden, death occurs. This

basic plot line diagram puts all of the single happenings in life, whether hard or soft, into the

context of the entire life. The structure of the poem suggests an overarching theme which is

that the individual is part of a larger scheme.

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 The symbolism in this poem serves to further explain the three realms of existence

and how the relationship between the single and the whole are a part of these realms.

The egg, life, and the stanza are fragments of their own, respective, wholes.

The egg can never understand that which is outside of it, therefore ostracizing itself from a

large portion of the whole. In living, one can never understand that which is beyond one’s

own environment, or in egg terms, its own shell. Like the other two, the four line stanza is

also, due to spacing, just a piece of a whole. Looked at individually, the egg, the stanza, and a

life are, in themselves, complete, but relative to the whole, they are only components.

The egg, the stanza, and the life are three concepts loosely used to represent theories

about life. With consideration to their wholes, the stanza is a part of the poem and the egg is

part of the nest; the whole of the human life is never explicitly revealed, but ,in actuality, is

the breadth of the world’s experiences. These concepts are all interchangeable: Each stanza is

like an egg containing a little piece of the larger whole. Each life is like an egg. Each stanza

is like a life. The poem is a nest filled with stanzas, which are all eggs. The nest is like the

human experience and the egg is the single human who’s shell provides the limitations of

their understanding of the world.

The egg is “still unhatched though warm.” the understanding is that the egg has life

within and will hatch at some point. The hatching, however, is, counter-intuitively, a symbol

for death, rather than birth. The egg breaking ought to be equated to the life ending; in both

situations, the individuality, which in relation to the whole is a fragment, is destroyed. The

deepest, most essential, idea to this poem is the idea that in being destroyed, the fragment

becomes the whole.

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 When the egg, representing life, breaks, and the human dies, it transcends its former

limitations and actually gains its freedom—it becomes the bird. The human is the egg which,

inherently, will never understand its own world due to its shell. When death occurs, in

actuality, a birth occurs. The human becomes like the bird. The bird has no shell. The bird

transcends the existence that the contents of the egg would understand to be existence. In

dying, humans, metaphorically, become birds, and in becoming birds, also become Watchers.

The author describes the eggs in the nest as being “watched over by something I have

never seen.” If the egg is a representation of an individual life, and a life-form can only

understand that which occurs with its own shell, that which was outside of its shell, that being

the Watcher, would be exactly what the author calls it, “something I have never seen.” The

egg never sees the bird!

One final piece of evidence supporting the bird representing a final post-death form is

that the bird is described as “flying among the scarlet flowers.” The scarlet flower is the rose.

The rose is the flower of death. Birds fly among the representations of death because it was

death that let them finally fly.

The watcher is hypothesized, by the author, as being “a tree angel, perhaps, or a ghost

of holiness.” These descriptions combine human characterization of nature (tree angel) with

characterizations of religion (ghost of holiness). This suggests that the human equivalent to

the watcher, which we determined to be a bird, is an entity consisting of some mixture of

religion and nature. Certainly, at this point, one would agree that the author was not

misleading when he/she states at the beginning of the poem, that words insufficiently

describe life.

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 At the end of the poem, the author expresses longing for becoming a hummingbird.

The only difference between a hummingbird and a generic bird is that a hummingbird hums.

The hum is a sort of background noise that one can only hear if one is extremely in-tuned to

the noises around them. So this bird, this watcher, presiding over humans, those being the

warm eggs, is constantly emitting the slightest noise; A noise loud enough for the eggs

(humans) to be aware of it, but not substantial enough for humans to be able to understand

what a bird/watcher is through it.

This relationship between the egg, nest, and bird suggests the following: There are

essentially three realms, or levels, of existence. There is the egg, the stanza, the single human

life, which is limited in its perception as it is limited in its design. There is the nest, the poem,

and that which exists outside of the perception of the single human. Finally, there is a

transcendental existence which is necessarily embodied once life ends.

Nearing the end of the poem, the author describes death as the point when “time will

brim over the singular pond, and become forever.” The pond is like the egg or stanza in that

it is a representation of the living organism and thus, has the characteristic limits of an

organism; it’s a small, isolated, controlled, body of water. Death brings time out of the water,

and the pond transcends its limited existence to become forever. The quote used at the

beginning of this paragraph comes from the longest line of the poem, the climax, which

occurs right before the poem’s descent, representing death. Such suggests that the quote,

having been the climax, the highest point in the plot-line of the poem, is the most profound

creation of this poem; the softest time—the pinnacle that marked the tipping point towards

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the death of the poem. It is after the quick descent into the final line, that the poem, like an

egg, breaks, and travels through the gateway that is death into forever-hood.