Hope is the thing with feathers
Emily Dickinson · 1891
Public domain
Published in 1891. The text is free of copyright in the United States. This copy is the poem, without the Project Gutenberg header.
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.