Cartoon by Michael Leunig
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.
2 comments:
Lovely Pome. The thing with feathers is also The Duck.
Emily Dickinsons poetry is sometimes obscure but this poem is pretty straight forward. I like the last two lines
"Yet never in Extremity,
It asked a crumb from me"
For me it places Hope alongside Faith and Charity (Love) as being ideas beyond our power to manipulate or alter; we can actively and emotionally lack, or have in abundance all three, but we cannot alter their definitions, their call, or their imperatives.
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