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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
Delated, 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.
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