The Snowstorm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited

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

Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates

Around the radiant fireplace,

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind's masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry

Furnished with tile, the fierce

Curves his white bastions with projected

Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild

So fanciful, so savage, nought cares

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 gateA tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are numbered, and the

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,

The frolic architecture of the snow.