Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)

"A Bird, came down the Walk" by Emily Dickinson (1891)

The Poetry Foundation website reprinted the version of Dickinson’s poem from R.W. Franklin’s 1999 book The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. “A Bird, came down the Walk” was originally published in Dickinson’s posthumous 1891 collection titled Poems.

This poem shares the narrative gesture of a bird refusing a human’s “Crumb”/”crumbs” with “Fame is a fickle food” (Line 14 and Line 6, in the respective poems). In both poems, Dickinson characterizes the bird as discerning. “A Bird, came down the Walk” also showcases Dickinson’s influential use of em dashes and idiosyncratic capitalization.

"There is a June when Corn is cut" by Emily Dickinson (1955)

This poem, while a part of Dickinson’s 19th-century manuscripts, was not published until 1955 in a collection edited by Thomas H. Johnson. The source cited above, The Emily Dickinson Archive, offers several versions of the poem: 1) Dickinson’s handwritten version, 2) Johnson’s edit of the poem, and 3) Franklin’s edit of the poem.

The “Corn” (Line 1) in this poem informs the metaphoric reading of “corn” (Line 9) in “Fame is a fickle food.” Both poems also explore the ideas of coming second.