December 25, 2010

Winter Poems by Favorite American Poets (1870)


Another fantastic wintry book to read as the snow blankets the ground tomorrow. I'm feeling pretty steampunk at this point. A wonderful selection from within is posted below. Click on lithograph above to read entire book.

The Snow Storm
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
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 and 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 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
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

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