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