THE SNOWSTORM
Reading edition
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.