"Hope' is the thing with feathers" is a lyric poem in ballad meter written by American poet Emily Dickinson, The manuscript of this poem appears in Fascicle 13, which Dickinson compiled around 1861. It is one of 19 poems included in the collection, in addition to the poem "There's a certain Slant of light." With the discovery of Fascicle 13 after Dickinson's death by her sister, Lavinia Dickinson, "'Hope' is the thing with feathers" was subsequently published in 1891 in a collection of her works under the title Poems, which was edited and published by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd.
History of publication
"'Hope' is the thing with feathers" was first compiled in one of Dickinson's hand-sewn fascicles, which was written during and put together in 1861. In the 1999 edition of The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, R.W. Franklin changed the year of appearance from 1861, where the holograph manuscript exists, to 1862. It is listed in the appendix that poems numbered 272 to 498 were written during this year, which amounted to the third most poems Dickinson wrote in the span of years from 1860 to 1865, at 227. The edition that Dickinson included in the fascicle was text B, according to Franklin. No current holograph manuscript exists of the first written version of this selection. "'Hope' is the thing with feathers" first appeared in print in a Poems by Emily Dickinson, second series in 1891. It was published by Roberts Brothers in Boston.
Upon the original publication, her poems were reassessed and transcribed by Thomas H. Jefferson in 1955. They became the first scholarly collection of Dickinson's work. His transcription of her works from her fascicles was taken from the earliest fair copy of her poetic works. Within the Johnson collection, "'Hope' is the thing with feathers" is poem number 254. Franklin, in his edition of her works, used the last fair copy of her poems. It is marked as number 314 in his collection and can be found under such in the Norton Anthology of Poetry.
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"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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HOPE.
"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. |}
Fascicle 13
Fascicle 13 is the bound edition of her written poetry that contains "'Hope' is the thing with feathers" written in Dickinson's hand. According to the work done by Franklin, there are similarities in the materials used for this fascicle and with Fascicles 11–13, 14, as well as Fascicles 9, 11, and 12. Some distinct markers of Fascicle 13 include a woven-style of stationery, with paper that is cream in appearance with a blue rule line on it. It also is decorated in an embossed style that frames the page with "a queen's head above the letter 'L'." To view the holograph manuscript of this in person, the Houghton Library at Harvard University houses it.
Analysis
In her analysis of the poem, scholar Helen Vendler, states that the opening foot of the poem is "reversed," adding more color and emphasis on the word "Hope." Dickinson implements the use of iambic meter for the duration of the poem to replicate that continuation of "Hope's song through time." Most of Dickinson's poetry contains quatrains and runs in a hymnal meter, which maintains the rhythm of alternating between four beats and three beats during each stanza. "'Hope' is the thing with feathers" is broken into three stanzas, each set containing alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, totaling in twelves lines altogether.