The following selection is an artistic description
of a winter storm. Read it carefully to get the
successive pictures that are presented. Try to
determine, as you read, when the snow fell, whether
the scenes are in the country or in town; if the
author was an actual observer of the storm or if he
wrote the poem out of imagination.
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 farmhouse at the garden's end. 5
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed
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 swanlike form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, 20
Mauger 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 5
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night work--
The frolic architecture of the snow.
1. The first stanza describes the effect of the
storm on people. Who are some of those
inconvenienced?
2. In the remainder of the poem, the storm is
thought of as an architect. What words describe him
and his work? Why is he "myriad-handed?" Explain
windward; mauger; "Parian wreaths." Why is the
storm said to use the last mockingly? What other
fanciful or mischievous things does the storm do?
3. Express in your own words the idea in lines 3-8,
page 195. Compare the work of human builders with
the work of the storm.
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American
essayist, poet, and philosopher. He lived at
Concord, Massachusetts.