Readers looking for Emily Dickinson's famous poems can start with "Hope" is the thing with feathers, I'm Nobody! Who are you?, Success is counted sweetest, If I can stop one Heart from breaking, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, and I heard a Fly buzz (when I died). Together they show what she does best. She takes a small, ordinary image, such as a bird, a frog, or a fly, and presses on it until it raises a hard question about hope, fame, failure, kindness, the mind, or death.
These six make a reading route, not a ranking. Several other Emily Dickinson poems are at least as well known: "Because I could not stop for Death," "Wild nights – Wild nights!," "Tell all the truth but tell it slant," and "A Bird, came down the Walk." "A Bird, came down the Walk" and "Because I could not stop for Death" return below as companion readings.
Every section follows the same path. You get the full text, then the central image, then the ending, where Dickinson almost always turns the poem. The texts of “Hope,” “Success,” “Funeral,” and “Fly” follow the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation’s online transcriptions. “I'm Nobody” follows the Academy of American Poets’ text from R. W. Franklin’s edition; “If I can stop” follows Thomas H. Johnson’s The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Dashes are set as unspaced em dashes. Wording and punctuation vary between editions, and the FAQ explains why.
In This Article
- Key Takeaways
- 1. "Hope" Is the Thing With Feathers
- 2. I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
- 3. Success Is Counted Sweetest
- 4. If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking
- 5. I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
- 6. I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Start With the Image That Stays
Key Takeaways
- These six poems offer a representative reading route, not an objective popularity ranking.
- Dickinson turns familiar images—a bird, a fly, a frog—into difficult questions.
- Death and mental distress appear through imagined speakers, not straightforward autobiography.
- Hope, kindness, and success receive sharply different definitions across the selections.
- First-line titles and editorial punctuation can vary between editions.
1. "Hope" Is the 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.
The quotation marks around "Hope" signal a definition. The definition arrives as a body: feathers, a perch, a song with no words. Hope here is felt before it is understood. The dashes keep breaking the line, as if the speaker checks each claim before making the next.
The second stanza puts that small body through a test. The bird sings "sweetest" in the Gale, and only a very "sore" storm could abash it. The bird even keeps other people warm.
The turn comes in the last two lines. Hope "never" asked "a crumb" of the speaker. You can read this as gratitude for a gift that costs nothing. You can also hear something lonelier: a presence that keeps singing whether or not anyone feeds it.
To see the difference between a symbolic bird and a real one, read "A Bird, came down the Walk." In that poem a bird bites an angleworm in halves and eats it raw.
2. I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know!How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one's name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog!
The poem opens with a confession of obscurity and turns it into an invitation. Two nobodies make "a pair," and the pair needs a secret. Some editions print "they'd banish us" where this text has "they'd advertise." The first makes the outside world a threat. The second makes it a crowd eager to publicize.
The frog carries the second stanza. Being Somebody means repeating your own name all June to a swamp that admires you for it. That swamp is the "Bog." Fame shrinks to a croak, and the audience shrinks to mud. The playful invitation makes its joke about publicity easy to grasp. Its joke still lands on anyone who has watched a person keep announcing themselves.
3. Success Is Counted Sweetest
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of VictoryAs he defeated—dying—
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
The first stanza states a paradox: people who never succeed understand success best, the way only real thirst teaches what nectar is. The rest of the poem moves that idea onto a battlefield. The "purple Host," the winning army, has captured the flag and still cannot define victory. A defeated soldier can, because he is dying while the victory music reaches his "forbidden ear." The final line gives the sound two adjectives, "agonized and clear." Pain and clarity arrive together.
This is one of the few poems printed while Dickinson was alive. It appeared anonymously in the 1878 anthology A Masque of Poets, and some readers guessed Ralph Waldo Emerson had written it. Fewer than a dozen of her poems were published in her lifetime, usually without her name and often with edits.
Her reputation came after her death in 1886. Her sister Lavinia found the manuscripts, including small booklets Dickinson had sewn by hand. The first collection, Poems, appeared in 1890, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. A poet who wrote about understanding success from a distance never saw her own.
4. If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking
If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one PainOr help one fainting Robin
Unto his Nest again
I shall not live in Vain.
This is the plainest poem in the group: seven lines, few dashes, and a measure of a worthwhile life that keeps counting to one. One Heart, one Life, one Pain, one Robin. The modest number is the point.
The "fainting Robin" connects back to the first poem. Hope's bird "never" asked for a crumb. Here the speaker imagines helping a robin; even one such act would make a life worthwhile. The repeated line "I shall not live in vain" closes the poem, and the capital on "Vain" the second time gives it weight.
Some readers find the poem sentimental, and it does lack the strangeness of her best-known work. It is still worth reading next to "Success is counted sweetest." That poem defines success as longing for what you lack. This one defines it as usefulness to someone else.
5. I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading—treading—till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through—And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum—
Kept beating—beating—till I thought
My Mind was going numb—And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space—began to toll,As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here—And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down—
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing—then—
The funeral never leaves the speaker's head. Each part of the ritual becomes a sensation: the mourners' treading, the service beating like a Drum, the Boots of Lead creaking across the Soul. The doubled verbs "treading—treading" and "beating—beating" make you hear the pressure build. The speaker never names a cause. The poem shows a mind under strain without explaining it.
In the fourth stanza the walls fall away. The Heavens become a Bell and all of Being becomes an Ear. The speaker and Silence are left "Wrecked, solitary, here." Then a "Plank in Reason" breaks. The speaker falls through one World after another and "Finished knowing." The last dash leaves that ending open.
Readers have taken the poem as a breakdown, a faint, a migraine, or a loss of faith, and the text supports more than one reading.
6. I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died
I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air—
Between the Heaves of Storm—The Eyes around—had wrung them dry—
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset—when the King
Be witnessed—in the Room—I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable—and then it was
There interposed a Fly—With Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz—
Between the light—and me—
And then the Windows failed—and then
I could not see to see—
The speaker describes her own death from somewhere after it. The room is arranged for a grand arrival. The mourners have cried their eyes dry, the keepsakes have been given away, and everyone waits for "the King," whether that means Death or God. What arrives is a fly.
Its "Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz" places itself "Between the light—and me," and the solemn scene shrinks to an insect bumping around a window. The "Windows" that then fail are the speaker's eyes. The last line, "I could not see to see," uses the same verb twice. The first "see" is physical sight. The second is understanding. The poem refuses to say whether anything waits beyond the fly.
"Because I could not stop for Death" makes a useful companion. There Death is a courteous carriage driver, and the speaker rides past a school and fields of grain toward eternity. In the 1890 edition the poem was printed under the title "The Chariot." Both poems speak from beyond death. The carriage ride is calm, and the deathbed is interrupted. Taken together they show the range of Emily Dickinson poetry about dying, and why readers return to it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Emily Dickinson's shortest poem?
One candidate by line count is "All things swept sole away": two lines and eight words. The Dickinson Electronic Archives reproduces it at the end of a letter to Higginson: "All things swept sole away / This—is immensity—." "Fame is a bee" is longer, at four lines and 18 words.
Why are Dickinson's poems often identified by their first lines?
Dickinson gave titles to almost none of her poems, so readers use first lines instead. Scholars also cite the numbers assigned in Thomas H. Johnson's 1955 edition and R. W. Franklin's 1998 edition. Titles you may see, such as "The Chariot," were added by early editors.
Why does punctuation differ between editions of the same Dickinson poem?
Her manuscripts use dashes of different lengths and angles, plus capital letters in unexpected places. The 1890 editors replaced many of these with standard commas and periods. Later editions restored the dashes, but printers still render them in different ways. Some poems also survive with alternate words, like "advertise" and "banish us."
Are the speakers in these poems always Dickinson herself?
No. In a July 1862 letter to Higginson, she wrote that when she stated herself as the "Representative of the Verse," it meant "a supposed person," not her. The dying voice in the fly poem and the falling mind in the funeral poem are imagined speakers.
How many poems did Emily Dickinson write?
She wrote nearly 1,800 poems. Franklin's 1998 edition numbers 1,789 of them. Most were unknown to the public until after her death.
Start With the Image That Stays
Dickinson's large questions come through small images: a bird that keeps singing without asking for a crumb, a frog announcing itself to a bog, a fly getting in the way of a deathbed. These six poems give you different ways in. They range from the practical kindness of "If I can stop one Heart from breaking" to the inward collapse of "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain."
Start with the image that interests you most. Read the poem aloud and return to its ending, since most of these poems turn in their last line or two. Then ask whether that ending confirms your first impression or makes you reconsider it.