Hope Is The Thing With Feathers By Emily Dickinson

Hope is a recurring topic found all throughout history. It is found in the ancient tale of Pandora and her box, where hope is the only good thing that comes out of the box, as well as the “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr, telling of his hope for a nondiscriminatory world. Hope also is the topic of Emily Dickinson’s poem titled “Hope is the Thing with Feathers,” which goes as follows:

'Hope' is the thing with feathers—

That perches in the soul—

And sings the tune without the words—

And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—

And sore must be the storm—

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—

And on the strangest Sea—

Yet, never, in Extremity,
She was born on December 10, 1830 as Emily Elizabeth Dickinson in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her paternal grandfather, Samuel Dickinson, was well known as the founder of Amherst College. Her father worked at Amherst and served as a state legislator and her mother was Emily Norcross. Emily Elizabeth had two siblings, an older brother William Austin and a younger sister Lavinia Norcross.

Emily Dickinson received her education at Amherst Academy (now Amherst College) for seven years and the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for one year. She was an excellent student, despite missing much of the school year due to illness and depression. She left the seminary in 1848 after 1 year of staying there, and it is believed that her depression and sickness caused her departure from school.

Dickinson only shared select poems with close friends, but she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published in 1890 after her death in Amherst in 1886 from Bright’s
The lines “sings the tune without the words/And never stops at all” symbolizes Hope as something someone feels, no matter what circumstance they are facing. The second stanza says Hope is most intensely felt in a “storm,” in other words, times of despair. When Dickinson says “the little Bird/That kept so many warm,” she implies that Hope gives people comfort. In the third stanza, she says she has heard it everywhere “in the chillest land and strangest sea” meaning Hope is universal, and everyone can feel it, and that seems to be the theme of the poem as well. Keeping in mind the metaphor of a bird, the last line suggests that Hope gives without asking for anything in return, not even a crumb. The overall tone seems to be in respect or in awe of Hope because Hope helps people in numerous ways without anyone having to do anything in return for Hope. The rhyming pattern changes in each stanza. The first one is of an ABCB pattern, the second is an ABAB, and the final one is an ABBB. The first word of most of the lines of the poem is “and” which emphasizes the multiple qualities of