the blackbird(s)
Blackbirds are everywhere in this poem; they are the only constant among all thirteen sections. Often, they are also the only living thing mentioned in the sections without a human presence, or the only thing moving. Blackbirds appear doing many things: sitting in trees or snowy mountains, flying in the breeze, whistling their music, strutting around townspeople's feet, and causing various ominous feelings with their shadows. They stand for nature, and its various components, and also represent how humans view nature. The birds do not have any innate symbolic meaning—they simply exist in nature—so their meaning is a result of how humans, and specifically we as readers, choose to view them.
a man and a woman
The man and woman who appear in section IV are every hypothetical couple, and they are used to explore the idea of two humans being linked, or being "one." They are coupled by the sexual sense of being "one," but the inclusion of the blackbird makes it a trio, shifting the suggested meaning to a broader sense of natural unity, that in some senses, humans and animals are all "one" with each other and with nature.
thin men of Haddam
These men, addressed in section VII, have their heads in the clouds, so to speak, and are lost in imaginations of idealized "golden birds." As a result, they ignore the blackbirds and the women around them. Their thinness may suggest that their imaginary world does not fully sustain and nourish them the way the real world would; it may also reference a trope of poets being thin, sickly men who live inside their own minds. The thin men likely represent the sort of poetic thinker who is totally disconnected from reality: a stark offense in a poem full of pure, descriptive snippets of reality.
bawds of euphony
This phrase in section X is an exceptionally obscure way to describe those who only enjoy the cheap, shallow pleasures of sounds or poetry that are pretty without substance. A "bawd" is technically a woman who runs a brothel; here, the word is most likely metaphorical, describing a type of writer or reader who traffics in cheap verses the way that pimps traffic in sex workers. Blackbirds are too dark and commonplace to be the typical bird used as a Romantic poetic symbol; however, their stark image apparently has the power to inspire sharp feelings in these superficial people, to startle them on some deeper level.
the man in the carriage
This central figure of section XI seems to be a rich man, as indicated by his fairy-tale-like "glass coach" and the antique term "equipage." He likely rides in either a horse-drawn carriage or a train car—the wording is ambiguous—and is struck by fear when the shadow of his coach appears to him as a flock of blackbirds. We might imagine the man looking out his window and seeing the shadow of the apparatus on top of the train, or perhaps the attendant driving his carriage, racing alongside the road. To him, the blackbirds are a threat, perhaps because they are a reminder of nature, or a symbol of death. The man's riches are meant to insulate him in some way from nature, and thus from death; thus, the blackbird is a frightening intrusion as it reminds him of the interconnectedness of humans and nature, and the inevitability of nature's processes. The preposition "over," which makes it seem at first as though the man is flying, not riding, across Connecticut, adds the implication that he is attempting to steal the power of flight from birds and from nature; if so, the shadow of birds following him would again be a threat to his human-centered superiority.
