The first line already sets up the image by referring to “feathers,” which immediately invokes accusations with birds in the reader’s mind (Dickinson, 1861).

It is relatively straightforward and, as mentioned above, amounts to representing hope as a little yet resilient bird. Dickinson describes hope as a bird within the text, the liberal use of dashes stresses the idea of pushing onward in the visual appearance of the poem, and the strangely elaborate wording of the first line emphasizes the contrast between the physical description and spiritual subject matter.įirst and foremost, Dickinson constructs the image within the text itself through purely lexical means. The author carefully constructs the titular image of hope as a little bird by operating on several levels of meaning and perception, despite the deceptive simplicity of the language used. Emily Dickinson’s “‘Hope’ is a thing with feathers” may serve as an excellent example of everything discussed above. While the image itself is easy to discern, there is still more to it than immediately meets the eye – in other words, the image-centered poetry is simple but not simplistic. At the same time, the fact of articulating the image in direct and straightforward language does not make such poetry shallow. Instead of the elaborate verse where images served as decorations illustrating the text’s main idea, the exacting visual image articulated with painstaking clarity became the poem’s essence – the idea itself. Reliance on clear language and direct visual images separated the works of the Imagists and Emily Dickinson from the late Victorian poetry.

Hope by emily dickinson meaning