Emily Dickinson on hope

First thought is maybe I should change my page name to include a female poet in the title. Just have to find some clever rhyme or pun or something...

Anyhow, this week I have chosen another great female poet (I'm against using silly diminutives like 'poetess').
Most of the ones I have researched are rather short, which I do like and could analyse in depth but this one rather took my fancy a little more.

'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.

(Written c.1861) 

Sources seem to suggest that Emily lived almost entirely in isolation and thus spent much time on internal reflection. This led me to notice how she is contemplating something internal - 'hope' - but by using an outdoor metaphor - a 'bird'. Yet she escapes the possibility that this hope is trapped inside the 'soul' by using lexemes denoting freedom: 'perches', 'sings'. After establishing the metaphor she extends it to the human in which the hope resides; troubling times are compared to a 'storm', now a cliche but probably less common in the 1800s.

The antithesis of 'little bird' when juxtaposed with 'so many' is where Dickinson comments upon how a little hope from one person can go a long way with others. Even if it is 'abash[ed]' (nice mimesis with the scansion emphasising the plosive /b/), this does not mean to say that hope will not return; it 'never stops', intensified with the tautological adverbial 'at all'. It has even been heard by the speaker 'in the chillest land', where superlative cold signifies loneliness, conjuring a deserted image with the help of the expanse of the concrete nouns 'land' and 'sea'; hope can be found anywhere on earth. Hope is strongest (the bird is 'sweetest') when there is a 'gale' - hope thrives in a little danger, for without it hope would not be necessary.

The final message is uplifting: hope will always be there because it has to be. The use of 'crumb' brings any problems back down to a small scale to encourage the reader to understand how effortless hoping is, as effortless as the rhyming triplet which rounds the whole off in a content tone.

If I remember in the coming weeks I'll try to find some of my own poetry and post that as an extra; at least that way I can never lose it!