THE SNOWSTORM

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.
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!
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, 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,

5

ΙΟ

15

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,

s 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.

5

ΙΟ

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.

SNOW-BOUND

BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

HE sun that brief December day

THE

Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.

A chill no coat, however stout,

Of homespun stuff could quite shut out--

A hard, dull bitterness of cold,

That checked, midvein, the circling race
Of lifeblood in the sharpened face-
The coming of the snowstorm told.
The wind blew east; we heard the roar
Of ocean on his wintry shore,

And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores:
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd's grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows,
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
The cock his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.

Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro,

Crossed and recrossed the wingèd snow;
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window frame,
And through the glass the clothesline posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

5

ΙΟ

15

20

25

30

5

ΙΟ

15

20

25

30

So all night long the storm roared on:
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of nature's geometric signs,

In starry flake and pellicle,

All day the hoary meteor fell;
And when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below -
A universe of sky and snow!

The old familiar sights of ours

Took marvelous shapes: strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corncrib stood,

Or garden wall, or belt of wood;

A smooth white mound the brush pile showed,

A fenceless drift what once was road;

The bridle post an old man sat,

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;

The well curb had a Chinese roof;

And even the long sweep, high aloof,

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa's leaning miracle.

All day the gusty north wind bore
The loosening drift its breath before;
Low circling round its southern zone,
The sun through dazzling snow mist shone.
No church bell lent its Christian tone
To the savage air; no social smoke

Curled over woods of snow-hung oak;

A solitude made more intense

By dreary-voiced elements

The shrieking of the mindless wind,
The moaning tree boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger tips of sleet.

Snow-Bound.

1. Outline, stanza by stanza, the story told. Who tells it? Where is the scene laid? How many days and nights are covered?

2. Compare this with the previous poem for clearness, pleasant sound, pictures shown, new ideas. Which do you like better? The last line of "The Snowstorm" interprets lines 14-25, page 197. How?

3. John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) was born at Haverhill, Massachusetts. Snow-bound, from which this extract is taken, gives a good description of his home and family. A great deal of his writing was done while editor of various magazines and newspapers. He was for a long time connected with the Atlantic Monthly. Many of his poems describe country life in New England; others retell old stories of pioneer days. He died at Amesbury, Massachusetts.

5

IT

TOM PINCH'S RIDE

BY CHARLES DICKENS

T WAS a charming evening, mild and bright. The four grays skimmed along, as if they liked it quite as well as Tom did; the bugle was in as high spirits as the grays; the coachman chimed in sometimes with his voice; the wheels hummed cheerfully in unison; the brass work on s the harness was an orchestra of little bells; and thus as they went clinking, jingling, rattling smoothly on, the whole concern, from the buckles of the leaders' coupling reins to the handle of the boot, was one great instrument of music.