Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson: Summary, Analysis, Themes & Symbolism

Table of Contents H ope is one of those words that gets tossed around so casually we almost stop hearing it. Emily Dickinson does something different. She takes the idea and turns it into a small bird that lives inside us, singing through everything. The poem is short, only twelve lines, yet it has stayed with readers for over a century because it feels true in a quiet, stubborn way. It does not lecture. It simply observes. The Complete Poem "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, It asked a crumb of me. Emily Dickinson Dickinson wrote this around 1861 during one of her most productive periods. She never published it herself. Like nearly all of her nearly 1800 poems, it reached print only after …