Collection of emily Dickinson poems

Hope is a Thing with Feathers

'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.

Nature is What WE SEE

'Nature' is what we see—

The Hill—the Afternoon—
Squirrel—Eclipse—the Bumble bee—
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Nature is what we hear—
The Bobolink—the Sea—
Thunder—the Cricket—
Nay—Nature is Harmony—
Nature is what we know—
Yet have no art to say—
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.

A Book

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

She claimed that only those who have never succeeded can appreciate success, and wrote of the
“Defeated – dying – / On whose forbidden ear/ The distant strains of triumph/ Burst agonized and clear!”
Scraped flesh not only feels things more than usual, it feels things differently. After you scrape your
hands, you avoid pressing the scraped area against the carpet, because that area will sense no the
general mass of threads that normally give you the impression of softness; it will sense each thread
separately as a sharp prick. In the same way, Emily not only felt things more intensely, she felt them
individually. She was able to disentangle a certain impression from the mass of general sensations that
make up our perception of life, and make poetry about that impression in particular. Many poets have
written about the grief following death, but Emily distinguished the specific sorrow of a love that no longer
has an outlet. She described the peculiar solemnity of “Sweeping up the Heart/And putting Love away/We
shall not want to use again/Until Eternity.”