"Hope is the Thing with Feathers" -Emily Dickinson

Hope is the Thing with Feathers

By: Emily Dickinson

"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.

I chose this poem because I recognized it from an account on 9/11 I read back in middle school. Thinking it would be interesting to revisit it, I chose it for today's analysis. 

"Hope is the Thing with Feathers" is a rather light and simple poem. The speaker notes hope as a bird that is within all of our souls. The bird sings incessantly without cause or reason and is the "sweetest in the Gale."This poem discusses how the bird continues to sing through hardship - "unabashed in the storm" - and can be found anywhere - from "chillest land" to "strangest sea." What this translates to is that hope is ever-present and will always be there with you, even if you don't want it. 

Emily Dickinson's poetry was written during the last part of the Romantic period. Unknowingly, she greatly influenced this era. Her poems, packed with imagery, insight, and intuition, left a prominent mark on literature that helped define the Romantic literary era.