Emily Dickinson imagines what would happen if people could simply grow wings and escape their own recollections. She suggests that almost everyone would take flight, weary of being weighed down by the past. Those left behind would be the slow, earthbound things that memory doesn't trouble—perhaps animals or unthinking nature. Even the birds, accustomed to the sky, would be startled to see a whole flock of humans desperately fleeing not a place, but the inside of their own heads. The speaker’s tone is quietly aching. There’s no anger or drama, just a stark recognition that memory can become a prison, and that the longing to leave it is so universal it would empty the world. The poem creates a mood of delicate, airborne sadness—a daydream of escape that feels both tender and impossible.
To flee from memory — Summary
To flee from memory Had we the Wings Many would fly Inured to slower things Birds with surprise Would scan the cowering Van Of men escaping From the mind of man