Volume 17 , Issue 17

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

What is hope? How does it relate to feathers as it is implied in this Emily Dickinson, Poem: "Hope Is The Thing With Feathers (254)?" We all need hope to perch in our soul, don't we?

When Emily Dickinson wrote, "Hope is the thing with feathers," she was creating a metaphor of hope through a bird. Dickinson was comparing hope that is within each of us, being much like a bird that continues to fly inside of us all. We may all experience some dark times, but hope can offer some encouragement. The hope (bird) gives, makes us strong to weather anything.

The bird is the hope that perches in the soul / And sings the tune without words / And never stops at all. The bird continues to create the song without pause, and the hope stays present, always singing, always flying, giving us the encouragement that we need to weather any storm that might cross our path.

The song of hope sounds sweetest "in the Gale," and it would require a terrifying storm to ever "abash the little Bird / That kept so many warm." The speaker says that she has heard the bird of hope "in the chillest land" / And on the strangest Sea-", but never, no matter how extreme the conditions, did it ever ask for a single crumb from her.

Here is that Emily Dickinson poem in its entirety:
Hope Is the Thing With Feathers
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.
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