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Given the near-blizzard conditions outside - lovely large flakes blowing nearly sideways, piling atop fenceposts and blowing the birds about as they try to light on the feeder - I thought this poem was pretty much perfect for today.

The Snowstorm
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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 hidden 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.

*Parian: denoting or relating to a fine white marble mined in classical times in Paros
**maugre: in spite of

Emerson's poem is written in blank verse, which is to say, in unrhymed iambic pentameter (five iambic feet per line: taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM taDUM), except for a single line written in iambic tetrameter (four iambic feet per line): "Come see the north wind's masonry."

That line is the turning point in the poem, which opens with an evocative but quick overview of the storm and its effect on people. After Emerson's invitation to "see the north wind's masonry," however, he moves to a personification of the storm and enters into an extended metaphor (known as a "conceit"), in which the north wind (representing the storm) is compared to a mason (and perhaps to a sculptor as well), who spends his night constructing structures of snow.

The use of sensory details is terrific in this poem, from the opening use of sound - it's quite the Stürm und Drang beginning, isn't it, with "all the trumpets of the sky" and the frenzy of the snow's arrival? And the central conceit - "the north wind's masonry" - produces some phrases that are entirely swoon-worthy: "his wild work/so fanciful, so savage, nought cares he/for number or proportion"; he "leaves . . . astonished Art to mimic in slow structures . . . the mad wind's night-work,/the frolic architecture of the snow."

I hope those of you in the snowy places of the world are safe and warm inside. I'm off to enjoy a cup of tea. And to watch the birds on the feeder - so many of them at a time, and such an interesting assortment. Usually they would not all tolerate one another so well, but on a day like today when they need the calories, they seem inclined to allow more company than usual (12 on the one feeder at last count - and it's not what one would call an overly large feeder).

Today, another poem by Puritan poet, Anne Bradstreet, who emigrated to Ipswich, Massachusetts in the 1630s with her husband, Simon Bradstreet, a Cambridge graduate who eventually became Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts. Anne and her husband had eight children, despite Anne suffering from some paralysis, possibly as a lasting effect of smallpox. She wrote in the Elizabethan tradition, as her mastery of rhymed couplets and iambic pentameter show. A volume of poems was published in England during her lifetime. Shortly after her death, a volume of her work (containing today's poem) was published in America. A third collection of religious poems was published in the 19th century.

I started reading more Bradstreet after a dear friend confessed a massive crush on Anne, and I completely see why. Happy birthday, B!

Today's poem is a beautiful love poem, methinks. I don't believe I know too many women who are as content in their marriages as Anne seems to have been, gauging from this poem, but it is decidedly something to aspire to.


To My Dear and Loving Husband
by Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persever,
That when we live no more we may live ever.

The other day, I watched a movie version of As You Like It by the Bard, which was set in Japan (based on the architecture and costume), but seemed to lack any Asian actors, really. Nevertheless, I was much struck by the performance of Kevin Kline as Jaques, the melancholy advisor to the kind Duke in exile. Here is Jaques' monologue from Act II, scene 7:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard*,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

*pard: a leopard or other big cat

The monologue, written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), traces seven stages of life, sometimes called the seven ages of man. This lovely monologue, melancholy though it may be, was summarized in a mere five lines by Robert Conquest, who put it in limerick form. Warning: the limerick includes some crude language. Best not to share it with small kids.