A number of years ago, more years ago than I care to admit, I spent some time reading Emerson’s poetry. My plan at that time was to work systematically through the American poets: Emerson to Whitman to Dickinson to Longfellow and so on. I had already done a similar thing with Irish Poets and thought it was long past time to do the same thing with the American tradition.

I eventually read all the poets on my list, but not in a systematic way. I do little in a “systematic way.” Art and inspiration do not work that way. At least for me.

This is one of the poems I carried away from my time with Emerson. It is one that comes back to me during heavier snow-storms. On a winter-white morning, it seems like just the thing.

Enjoy!

 

The Snow-Storm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow. 

Listening with a pencil and my ear, these are the lines I marked:

 

stone by stone, 

Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work, 

The frolic architecture of the snow.

There is to this poem a calm coziness that I love. Though the second stanza of the poem plays with words like “savage” and “fierce,” for me the tone of the poem is set in these lines. The wild winter storm is something that happens outside of our selves, outside of our nice cozy place by the fire. It is a really a wonderful little poem.