Poetry Analysis

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171619

The poem "'Hope' is the thing with feathers" by Emily Dickinson was my favorite poem recited in class last week. Dickinson personifies hope, giving it the qualities of a bird. This "bird" is found in a person's soul, and never goes away. Dickinson's second stanza says:

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

which states that hope is sweetest when it is heard in the heavy winds, or when times are rough. The next line says that a powerful event only can shame the hope which nurtures so many people. In the last stanze, Dickinson concludes that even though hope has been there for her through thick and thin, it has never asked anything from her; the bird has never asked a crumb of her.