Wallace Stevens… “The Snowman”

The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

A little Frost…

A Patch of Old Snow (a poem by Robert Frost)

There’s a patch of old snow in a corner     That I should have guessed   Was a blow-away paper the rain   Had brought to rest.   It is speckled with grime as if            Small print overspread it, The news of a day I’ve forgotten—   If I ever read it.

January Snow

 

It’s snowing!

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky….
arrives the snow….”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

  From www.bartleby.com

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908).   An American Anthology, 1787–1900

The Snow-Storm

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.         5 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.         10 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         15 So fanciful, so savage, naught 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,         20 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         25 To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow.