No one knows when Emily Dickinson first drafted “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers.” However, we do know the poem existed by 1861, when she collected it, along with 18 other poems, in a handsewn edition known as a “fascicle.” This fascicle was discovered after Dickinson’s death in 1886. Thus, it wasn’t until 1891 that the “hope” poem appeared in print for the first time. Like many of the other works published in Poems, this short verse was composed in common meter, a hymn-like form in iambic rhythm that features lines that alternate between four and three feet. However, in a departure from the ABCB rhyme scheme associated with much of her poetry, Dickinson used a shifting rhyme scheme that morphs across the poem’s three quatrains. This shifting rhyme scheme moves toward a greater degree of consonance in a way that parallels the poem’s prevailing tone of optimism. This tone, in turn, reflects the poem’s simple yet powerful message about the undying nature of hope. Dickinson develops this theme through an extended metaphor of a bird that perches in a person’s soul and never stops singing its song, even in the most adverse conditions.

Take a Study Break