Hope” is the thing with feathers - / That perches in the soul –
-- Speaker (Lines 1 – 2)

Importance: These two lines open Dickinson’s poem, and immediately introduce the reader to its subject matter: hope. It also introduces the reader to the extended metaphor that will operate for the rest of poem, which likens the abstract quality of hope to a bird that sings in the human soul. Interestingly, in these opening lines the speaker does not directly state that hope is like a bird, but describes it obliquely as a “thing with feathers.” The word “thing” here is multivalent, possibly referring to something concrete but also to something abstract, befitting the poem’s concern with concretizing the abstraction of hope. The syntax “the thing with feathers” could also be read two different ways: first, that hope is an object or a being that has feathers; and second, that hope is a matter that has something...