Emily Dickinson's Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

The sound of the poem begins with iambic tetrameter and then iambic trimeter. The pattern is repeated throughout the poem which would make for an easy reading except that Dickinson broke up the poem with her dash marks. The dash marks makes a reader pause and read the following line with some emphasis. Though the true reason as to why she broke up the poem in such a way is unknown. There is no rhyme scheme present that

Hope by EmIly Dickinson Is a poem about hope and how Its lIke a bIrd flyIng InsIde. ThIs poem helped to realIze that no matter how dark thIngs may get, there Is always some glImmer of hope. You cannot just gIve up because lIfe Is gettIng tough. You need to get up when somethIng knocks you down and soar lIke a bird.

In the poem, “Hope” is the thing with feathers, Emily Dickinson uses birds as a metaphor to represent the hope of the world. Throughout the poem, hope is given many characteristics that a bird would be given to as well. Hope is “perched” in the soul and it sings without any lyrics. Hope sounds the most beautiful during the darkest of times and hope never asks anything in return. Birds as well do these things. They sing without any lyrics and sound the best during hard times and in the end, birds never ask anything in return. The poem,“Hope” is the thing with feathers shows how hope, like a bird, is immortal and lives within each of us. We all have the power to sing the song of hope, even during dark and hard times because this is when hope is the strongest and needed most.

Even before we were assigned to read Emily Dickinson’s poems, I already was familiar with some of them. Of the ones I had previously read and out of the ones read for HON 211, the most unforgettable is her poem known as Hope is the Think with Feather:

The type of rhythm shown in this poem is iambic trimeter. The poem has a rhyme scheme pattern of AABB.

In “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson, she creates a metaphor of hope through a bird; it is much like a bird that continues to fly inside each person of us. While we all experience some dark times, hope can offer some encouragements. And that the destroyer of hope causes pain and soreness that hurts them the most. I thought the poem is inspirational, because it motivates us by being optimistic and hope for the best.

Emily Dickinson “took definition as her province and challenged the existing definitions of poetry and the poet’s work” (Poetry Foundation). Although commonly overlooked because of her abstract and abridged writing approaches, Dickinson moved away from traditional ideals by including abnormal capitalization and punctuation to create a unique rhythm and style. She was able to convey powerful messages and ideas, such as death, nature, and hope, that are completely incomprehensible to most people through the use of literary techniques such as metaphors, similes, and imagery. “[Her] power of condensation, the rhythmic hammer of her thoughts, whether in prose or verse, is so phenomenal that it call[ed] for a new system of weights and measures” (Ella Gilbert Ives, Poetry Criticism). Because Dickinson did not get the same support as many other considerable poets of the time, including Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, she, as well as her poems, did not become famous until much after her death in 1886. “Hope” is the thing with feathers proves that the abstract feeling of hope can be explained in order to help people through even the toughest of times and in overcoming

Emily Dickinson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow both used symbolism to bring their poems more depth and understanding. The two authors wrote poems about life events and had very similar approaches. The way they viewed life was very different from the other authors because they used optimism in their poems which expressed the meaning more deeply. The symbolism they both used was hidden, but once found it brought new and intriguing thoughts to their poems. These two authors both had very powerful ideas, which was put into poetry and influenced the minds of many people. The poem, “Hope”, by Emily Dickinson is about a bird and throughout the poem you realize that the bird is not a bird at all, but symbolizes hope. The poem talks about the challenges that the bird has to go through to keep hope alive. In one stanza it talks about a dark, terrifying storm, which represents challenges in life. The bird still stays above the storm and this helps further the idea that hope is with you even in the darkest times. For example, “I’ve heard it in the chillest land- and on the strangest Sea- yet- never- and Extremity, it asked a crumb - of me" (Dickinson). This quote through the symbolism of the bird is saying that even when hope is pushing its limits it will never ask anything of you. This poem was beautifully written and emphasizes how important hope is to people in their daily lives. The poem by Longfellow is called," The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls". This poem is filled with symbolism, for example in the third stanza there is a traveler and his footprints are in the sands and then they are not; this represents the traveler dying. "The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls, Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls; The day returns, but nevermore Returns the traveller to the shore, And the tide rises, the tide falls"(Longfellow). In this quote the waves are life and the purpose of the last line is to announce that life will keep happening even if people die. He is optimistic about this because his theory is that people can still do things even though their time is short on this Earth. He obviously wants to make this theory known because he repeats the line "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls" at the end of every stanza.The two

In the poem, “Hope”, the author, Emily Dickinson, is writing a message in the poem. The poem explains how hope lives in your soul and could never run out. It is best in the hardest times and but could be ruined. It is known to be everywhere but never needs anything in return. The message that Emily Dickinson's trying to say is that in life things would bring you down but then hope is always there with you and bring us back up .

Emily Dickinson’s “A Bird came down the Walk” was written during the Romanticism time period which mostly focused on nature and thinking more artistically for individual awareness. Dickinson promotes the theme of nature by showing the person admiring yet fearing the bird they are watching all at the same time. That being said it is shown how much the people living in nature’s world truly do not understand the mystery that it is. But with the speaker watching the bird portray a godlike figure she gets an insight of just how different the world is from our point of view than it is from the creatures.

Hope is something that takes many forms and is described differently and that is seen in these two very different poems. The first poem is "Hope is the thing with feathers" by Emily Dickinson which is has hope symbolized by a bird. The second poem is "Hope is a tattered flag" by Carl Sandburg why shows how the flag is the spirit of the United States. In both of these poems hope is shown through something that isn't seen but is in away felt.

As a literary woman of the nineteenth century, Emily Dickinson wrote, ? ?Hope? is a things with feathers- that perches in the soul- and sings a tune without the words- and never stops- at all.? Are you listening? Does your soul too sing a melody, an ongoing tune to which you delicately move, and never stop? Here Dickinson suggests an aspect of life, a struggle for spiritual freedom, that applies to many women within the nineteenth century, as well as the women of today. My consciousness speaks to me; a spark of hope rests inside my soul, hoping to emerge into the sunlight of each new day. I am a woman; I am a delicate woman who listens to Dickinson?s fine words. I listen to the tune that never ends, in a constant

The poem itself consists of a regular poetic meter of an iambic tetrameter for each line of the four stanzas. As an example

In this poem the end rhyme scheme in the first couplet is “aa”. End rhyme scheme in the second couplet is ‘’bb’’. In the third couplet is ‘’cc’’. In the fourth is ‘’dd’’. And in the fifth couplet is ‘’ee’’ etc. This can be observed with examples from the poem.

It’s almost endless possibilities of variation both in rhyme and length of the line make it a particularly musical stanza. The proportion of rhyme seems to be usually three and two expressed by the symbol a-b-a-b-b. Here is an example for this type To a Skylark Percy Bysshe Shelley