Make your work count for points with a free to read H1 sample answer and easy to follow notes on all Emily Dickinson poems on the Leaving Cert course.

Every poem has a Style features and Themes breakout as well as highlighted text for quotations to prepare you for any Leaving Cert essay.

Contents of our full notes:

Emily Dickinson’s Biography – Leaving Cert highlights
Poem 1: “Hope” is the thing with feathers
Poem 2: There’s a certain Slant of light
Poem 3: I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
Poem 4: A Bird came down the Walk
Poem 5: I heard a Fly buzz – when I died
Poem 6: The Soul has Bandaged moments
Poem 7: I could bring You Jewels – had I a mind to
Poem 8: A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Poem 9: I taste a liquor never brewed
Poem 10: After great pain, a formal feeling comes
Sample essay: “Dickinson’s use of an innovative style to explore intense experiences can both intrigue and confuse.” Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of Emily Dickinson on your course.

Emily Dickinson’s poetry took the world by storm due to her archaic and idiosyncratic style differing from the “norm”. In a world of seemingly perfect literature emerging from England, Dickinson’s poetry was authentically American, with her leading the way for a new voice for a newly founded nation. Dickinson’s themes of hope versus despair, death, time and faith versus religion leads to abstract concepts enriched by metaphor, simile, symbolism and conceit…