HOPE.

Hope is the thing with feathers…

Emily Dickinson is one of my all time favorite poets. I’ve been reading from her complete collection this week, finding myself nodding my head in affirmation of so many of her insights. Even when she reveals her own despair and loneliness, she remembers the reader and reminds us to hope.

Here is her poem HOPE. in its entirety.

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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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(Poem Credit: Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, American, 1830-1886, from “Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete,” edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T.W. Higginson)