Emily Dickinson Hope Print

The text is the first stanza of the poem “Hope” by Emily Dickinson and reads:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all

I traced this from Dickinson’s original manuscript for the poem, so it’s in her handwriting. The bird is a swallow, the bird of freedom. They cannot be caged. I tried to evoke the visual style of taxonomy books that would have been contemporary to Dickinson.