The Buckley School's founder believed that all speakers should hone their presentation skills by reading poetry out loud. We keep that worthwhile practice alive by including a poem in our magazine each month for you to read aloud.
Famously reclusive, Emily Dickinson is easily one of most read and best known poets in American literature. She wrote more than 1,800 poems, though only a few were published during her lifetime.
Here’s one for your November read aloud. (Perhaps you’ll even feel like reciting it in honor of the annual presidential pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey, assuming that odd tradition is continued this year.)
Hope is the thing with feathers (254)
BY EMILY DICKINSON
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.
