The Snowstorm - Emerson

By Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841.

The Poem

 * 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 hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
 * And veils the farmhouse 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 hiddden thorn;
 * Fills up the famer'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.