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 hill
and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse 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
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, nought cares he
For number
or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or
kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A
swan-like form invests the hiddden thorn;
Fills up the famer'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.
1835 [1841]
John Greenleaf Whittier was inspired by this poem to write his poem "Snow-bound."
 Criticism on "The Snow-Storm"
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