Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, <br />Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, <br />Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air <br />Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven, <br />And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. <br />The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet <br />Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit <br />Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed <br />In a tumultuous privacy of storm. <br />Come see the north wind's masonry. <br />Out of an unseen quarry evermore <br />Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer <br />Curves his white bastions with projected roof <br />Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. <br />Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work <br />So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he <br />For number or proportion. Mockingly, <br />On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; <br />A swan-like form invests the hiddden thorn; <br />Fills up the famer's lane from wall to wall, <br />Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate <br />A tapering turret overtops the work. <br />And when his hours are numbered, and the world <br />Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, <br />Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art <br />To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, <br />Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, <br />The frolic architecture of the snow.<br /><br />Ralph Waldo Emerson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-snow-storm-3/
