"Hope" is the thing with feathers
Emily Dickinson (written c. 1861; published 1891)
One of Dickinson's most famous short poems, imagining hope as a bird that never stops singing.
Download the handwriting worksheet (PDF)Printable, ruled for handwriting: copy it by hand, then type it here.
About this text
Emily Dickinson wrote almost 1,800 poems in her lifetime but published fewer than a dozen; nearly all of her work, including this poem, appeared only after her death in 1886, when her sister discovered the manuscripts. This poem was likely written around 1861 and first printed in 1891, in the second posthumous collection of her work, under a title Dickinson herself never gave it — she rarely titled her poems at all.
Dickinson's dashes, used here in place of most conventional punctuation, are one of the most recognizable and most frequently "corrected" features of her work by early editors who smoothed them into commas and periods. Copying the poem exactly as given, dash for dash, is a way to preserve a feature of her style that published versions have not always kept intact.
What to watch for
- 2 quotation marks: quotation marks come in pairs and wrap exactly what someone says; check that every one that opens also closes.
- 1 apostrophe: sort each one into possession (the shepherd's staff) or a missing letter (don't = do not).
- Capital letters in the middle of a sentence: Gale, Bird, Sea, Extremity. Ask why each one is capitalized before typing it.
- Longest word: "strangest" (9 letters). Try spelling it aloud once before reaching it.
- 12 lines averaging about 6 words each. A comfortable line length for a single sitting.
Full text (reference)
"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.