Snow

“ The snow, that lay upon the earth
When he forsook his native hills,
Had slowly melted from his path,
And sought the bed of crystal rills;
The woods assumed a gayer hue,
The flowers put on the bloom of spring,
The clear sky shone with brighter blue,
And birds sped by on joyous wing. ”

“ XII. MARCH WIND.
High above the trees, swinging in across the hills,
There's a wide cloud, ominous and slow;
And the wind that rushes over sends the little stars to cover
And the wavering shadows fade along the snow.
Surely on my window (Hark the tumult of the night!)
That's a first, fitful drop of scanty rain;
And the hillside wakes and quivers with the strength of newborn rivers
Come to make our Northland glad and free again.
O remember how the snow fell the long winter through! ”

“ Even in the summer these enormous quantities of ice and snow produce a local winter, all the more curious from the contrast, for side by side with the gloomy glacier, with its great gaping crevices, its collection of stones, its terrible silence, flowers are blooming, birds are singing, and fruit ripens. It is like death and life. ”

“ To welcome the coming of beautiful snow.
How the wild crowd go swaying along,
Hailing each other with humor and song!
How the gay sledges like meteors flash by,—
Bright for the moment, then lost to the eye!
Ringing, Swinging, Dashing they go Over the crest of the beautiful snow:
Snow so pure when it falls from the sky,
To be trampled in mud by the crowd rushing by;
To be trampled and tracked by the thousands of feet
Till it blends with the horrible filth in the street. ”

“ SNOW
No breath of wind,
No gleam of sun—
Still the white snow
Swirls softly down—
Twig and bough
And blade and thorn
All in an icy
Quiet, forlorn.
Whispering, nestling,
Through the air,
On sill and stone,
Roof—everywhere,
It heaps its powdery
Crystal flakes,
Of every tree
A mountain makes:
Till pale and faint
At shut of day,
Stoops from the West
One wintry ray. ”

“ We love the sight of the brown and ruddy earth; it is the color of life, while a snow-covered plain is the face of death; yet snow is but the mark of life-giving rain; it, too, is the friend of man—the tender, sculpturesque, immaculate, warming, fertilizing snow. ”

“ You love the snow. You play in it, you hunt in it; it brings the melody of sleigh-bells, it gives white wings to the trees and new robes to the earth. Whenever it falls on the roof of this house and in the yard and upon the farm, sooner or later it vanishes; it is forever rising and falling, forming and melting—on and on through the ages. ”

“ Think of an endless plain, a sheet of dazzling snow in winter, an ocean of golden corn in summer, a tract of brown earth in autumn, and now in the earliest days of spring an expanse of white melting snow, with great patches of brown earth and sometimes green grass appearing at intervals, and further patches of half-melted snow of a steely-grey colour, sometimes blue as they catch the reflection of the dazzling sky in the sunlight. ”

“ He liked the snow, the paleness, the lamp-lights, the clear black prints which the passers' feet left on the snow. He liked the air, and above all the transparent, tender, naive, virgin tone which can be seen in nature only twice in the year: when everything is covered in snow, on the bright days in spring, and on moonlight nights when the ice breaks on the river. ”

“ And a warm west-wind blows, and thaw sets in,
After an hour a dripping sound is heard
In all the forests, and the soft-strewn snow
Under the trees is dibbled thick with holes,
And from the boughs the snow-loads shuffle down ”

“ For all that is on or about me, I know
There is nothing that's pure but the beautiful snow.
How strange it should be that this beautiful snow
Should fall on a sinner with nowhere to go!
How strange it would be, when the night comes again,
If the snow and the ice struck my desperate brain!
Fainting, Freezing, Dying alone, Too wicked for prayer, too weak for my moan
To be heard in the crash of the crazy town,
Gone mad in its joy at the snow's coming down;
To lie and to die in my terrible woe,
With a bed and a shroud of the beautiful snow! ”

“ Over the wide sea played an indescribable glitter, which was at the same time grand and enchantingry beautiful. A boundless field of snow, illumined by the spring sun, can rival it in splendour, but the snow is stillness and death, the shimmering waves are motion and life. ”

“ I love even those long rain-storms, that sap the icy fortunes of the lingering winter,—that melt the snows upon the hills, and swell the mountain brooks.
I love the gentle thaws that you can trace, day by day, by the strained snow-banks, shrinking from the grass ”

“ Below them the snow lay untrodden, exquisitely pure, piled here in great drifts, falling away there in wonderful curves and hollows, but always showing a surface perfect and undesecrated by any human touch. ”

“ The fellows who scouted for rising ground appeared and disappeared in the drifts, and the snow crusted on their lanterns, melting and freezing both at once. We couldn't hear the sea now; instead there rose the shrill notes of trees and the silky soft whistle of the ice particles over the snow. ”

“ Cold, wild, and stupendous, the dazzling brilliancy of the snow is rendered more striking by its contrast with the dark blue colour of the sky; and at night the stars shine with a lustre they have not in a denser atmosphere. ”

“ The snow is wet like your eyes at parting, cold as the promise of a winter dawn wet again as city-streets I must tread to make a living, the flask of wine pressed to my lips. On the winter landscape all I see is the ghost white of sheets, our sheets wrapped to keep breath warm the log cannisters of our bed a heady raft upon which to travel to burn up an ocean of delight. ”

“ They lie still in each other’s arms. Dawn light begins to creep in. A sound of sliding snow is heard on the roof, a sharp twittering of birds; down across the window masses of snow fall in soft thunder. ”

“ The fierceness of the winter is broken by the woods. The wind which sweeps the snow into immense drifts outside is heard here flowing over and among the tree-tops with a deep and constant roar; but is little felt. ”

“ Or heavy clouds come over and the snow sifts down, becomes deeper, communes with the breeze, wreathes itself in fantastic drifts. On the still branches of the forest the snow is balanced, or only disturbed by ravens flitting awkwardly from one tree to another. ”

“ She liked the way the snow squeaked under the runners of the sleigh, she liked the way the big farm horses kicked the snow, she liked the way the evergreen boughs, loaded with snow, held out their branches toward her. ”

“ On the clear summits the snow sometimes lies; and, as the royal orb sinks, you will see the snow blush for a minute with throbbing carnation tints that shift and faint off slowly into cold pallid green. ”

“ There has the white snow frolicsomely strown itself, till all that vast, outstretched distance glittered like a mirror in which only the heavens were reflected, and among these drifts our steps have been curbed. ”

“ Or even in the town gardens, after a continued snow has been melted away by a soft, western breeze, we are struck with the white, peeping buds of the snowdrop and the finely springing grass in the sward. ”

“ It is snow, but snow far gone into decay and decrepitude— snow that seems ashamed of itself for lingering so long after wearing out its welcome, and presenting itself in so revolting a dress—snow, in fact, which is like a man sinking into irremediable ruin and changing its former glorious state for that condition which is expressed by the unpleasant word "slush." ”

“ Housed and windowpaned from it, the greatest wonder to little children is the snow. To men, it is something like a crucible in which their world melts into a white star ten million miles away. The man who can stand the test is a Snow Man; and this is his reading by Fahrenheit, Réaumur, or Moses’s carven tablets of stone.
Night had fluttered a sable pinion above the cañon of Big Lost River, and I urged my horse toward the Bay Horse Ranch because the snow was deepening. ”

“ The snow was nearly level with the top of the stone walls, and the wind carrying it diagonally from the road, it rolled over the little ridge of stones which remained above the drifts, and then swept across the field, down a long descent, like a feather before the gale. ”

“ WHILE icy blasts are still sweeping through the cities of the North, while the snow lies deep on the ground, and the children, bundled up until little except their pink noses is visible, are coasting, sleighing, and snowballing, in the South soft breezes are sifting through the green leaves of the trees and gently stirring the beautiful flowers blossoming in the warm sunshine. ”

“ A pleasant disdain is felt for the snow which whirls on whistling winds against the pane; the herds are huddled in their cotes secure; and the storm has permission to mumble its belly full, and spit snow at its pleasure. ”

“ Dawn drew aside night’s veil of mist, and came
Across the hills. The clouds retired, and lo!
On every wind-swept crag, as Day looked forth,
Bright in the southern sunshine gleamed the snow,
A vision of the unforgotten North
’Twixt golden skies and poppy fields aflame.
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In the Valley.
Snow on the hills, but in the valley, flowers,
Poppies aflame and orange blooms, whose scent
With the faint odor of the snow is blent.
Snow on the peaks, but in the canyons, showers,
And torrents drinking strength from stormy hours. ”

“ SNOW-FLAKES Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, Over the woodlands brown and bare, Over the harvest-fields forsaken, Silent, and soft, and slow Descends the snow. ”

“ By many busy hands is shorn;
Autumn’s ripe fruits, an ample store,
Are gathered in for rich and poor. WINTER
Winter’s cold frost and northern blast—
This is the season that comes last:
The snow has come, the sleigh-bells ring,
And merry boys rejoice and sing. THE SNOW
Oh, see! the snow is falling now,
It powders all the trees;
Its flakes abound, and all around
They float upon the breeze.
’Tis snowing fast, and cold the blast,
But yet I hope ’twill stay:
Oh, see it blow the falling snow
In meadows far away.
Jack Frost is near, we feel him here,
He’s on his icy sled ”

“ The snow lay on the only practicable path, and it might conceal deep crevasses; or an avalanche might descend from above, and overwhelm us; or the mass, slipping from beneath our feet, might carry us down into one of the fathomless chasms below. ”

“ The snow has fallen in thick blankets, it has changed by pressure into firn, and then becomes a river of ice, flowing down into the valleys, gouging out deep ruts and, when they come into the influence of the summer sun, melting into torrents and rushing down, heaping up against obstacles, forming lakes, and then again finding a passage down, ever down, until they mingle with the sea. ”

“ Oh, merry swing the axes, and the bright chips fly!
Till at last the girls grew sleepy, and we got our coats to go.
We started off with racing-teams and moonlight on the snow;
Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high!
And soon again the winter world was voiceless as of old,
Alone with all the wheeling stars, and the great white cold.
Oh, the frost is on the forest, and the snow piles high! ”

“ The gale had hardly been blowing for ten or fifteen minutes, when the snow began to whirl down. It came in the tiniest possible flakes, consisting this time of short needles that looked like miniature spindles, strung with the smallest imaginable globules of ice—no six-armed crystals that I could find so far. Many a snowstorm begins that way with us. And there was even here, in the chasm of the road, a swing and dance to the flakes that bespoke the force of the wind above. ”

“ A light fall of snow on a strong crust is a thrilling page, furnishing narrative on narrative, with conclusions in many instances transcribed in the Book of Doom. Fluffy, ephemeral, matchless in its precision, and endless in its detail, the snow page displays the ways and whims of the great and small, of the thrifty and of the careless, of the roving hunters, of the home-abiding rodents ”

“ And found me banking up the house with snow.
And I was burrowing in deep for warmth,
Piling it well above the window-sills.
The snow against the window caught his eye.
‘Hey, that’s a pretty thought’—those were his words.
‘So you can think it’s six feet deep outside,
While you sit warm and read up balanced rations.
You can’t get too much winter in the winter.’
Those were his words. ”

“ The snow disappears with a marvellous rapidity. The ice, that was like granite in hardness and several feet thick on the great lakes, becomes dark and porous, and in spots literally seems to rot away. ”

“ The fine snow becomes rain; it becomes large snow; it melts as it falls; it freezes as it falls. At last a storm sets in, and night shuts down upon the bleak scene.
During the night there is a change. It thunders and lightens. ”

“ But while the earth has slumbered, all the air has been alive with feathery flakes descending, as if some northern Ceres reigned, showering her silvery grain over all the fields.
We sleep, and at length awake to the still reality of a winter morning. The snow lies warm as cotton or down upon the window-sill ”

“ Snow driving all the day, which was followed by frost, sleet, and some snow, till the 12th, when a prodigious mass overwhelmed all the works of men, drifting over the tops of the gates and filling the hollow lanes. ”

“ Then the wading through the drifts, the digging through the "solid whiteness;" and finally when the warm south winds change the dry, light snow into the moist, plastic moulding material, the snowballing, the making of human forms and the playing of games all add to make snow truly a joy of childhood. ”

“ THE SNOW-STORM 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. ”