Summary

The narrator questions where the waterfowl is going. He questions his motives for flying. He warns the waterfowl that he could possibly find danger, traveling alone. But, this waterfowl is not alone. He knows that the waterfowl is being led by some Power. As the waterfowl reaches out of the narrator's sight, the narrator reflects on God's guidance in his own life. The narrator is sure that God has led this waterfowl, and that the waterfowl had faith in the narrator. Now, the narrator's faith is strengthened. He knows that God is guiding him as well.

As the narrator sees God directing the waterfowl, the narrator is reminded of God's guidance in his own life. Through his observance in nature, the narrator is reconnected with his faith in God.

Analysis

"To a Waterfowl" is written in iambic trimeter and iambic pentameter, consisting of eight stanzas of four lines. The poem represents early stages of American Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 through celebration of Nature and God's presence within Nature.

Bryant is acknowledged as skillful at depicting American scenery but his natural details are often combined with a universal moral, as in "To a Waterfowl".

Figures of speech

• alliteration
  Alliteration
  In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of Three or more words or phrases. Alliteration has historically developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to...
  
  : While, Whither (lines 1-2); depths, dost (line 3); their, thou, thy (lines 3-4); distant, do, darkly (lines 6-7)
  
• metaphor
  Metaphor
  A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
  
  : last steps of day (comparison of the day to a creature that walks).
  
• anaphora: repetition of soon (lines 21, 22, 24). Anaphora is the repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of word groups occurring one after the other. Examples: (1) Give me wine, give me women and give me song. (2) For everything there is a season . . . a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted.—Bible, Ecclesiastes.
  
• personification: The speaker addresses the waterfowl as if it were a person, saying it has taught a lesson; he also refers to other waterfowls as fellows (line 23).
  
• metaphor
  Metaphor
  A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
  
  : on my heart / deeply hath sunk the lesson (comparison of the heart to the intellect)

Composition and publication history

The inspiration for the poem occurred in December 1815 when Bryant, then 21, was walking from Cummington

Cummington, Massachusetts

Cummington is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 978 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area.- History :...

 to Plainfield

Plainfield, Massachusetts

Plainfield is a town on the northwestern edge of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States, about 25 miles east of Pittsfield and 30 miles northwest of Northampton. The population was 589 at the 2000 census...

 to look for a place to settle as a lawyer. The duck, flying across the sunset, seemed to Bryant as solitary a soul as himself, inspiring him to write the poem that evening.

"To a Waterfowl" was first published in the North American Review

North American Review

The North American Review was the first literary magazine in the United States. Founded in Boston in 1815 by journalist Nathan Hale and others, it was published continuously until 1940, when publication was suspended due to J. H. Smyth, who had purchased the magazine, being unmasked as a Japanese...

in Volume 6, Issue 18, March 1818. It was later published in the collection Poems in 1821.

Critical response

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...

 praised it as "the best short poem in the language", and the poet and critic Richard Wilbur

Richard Wilbur

Richard Purdy Wilbur is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989....

has described it as "America's first flawless poem".