Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Snowstorm

New England Transcendental philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson loved the "wild work" of the "fierce artificer" who makes the world beautiful with his "frolic architecture."

In other words, a snowstorm makes the world look pretty.

Guess it depends on your point of view.

The farmer sighs as his lane is filled up with snow. For him snow means shoveling or plowing (without a snow blower or 4 X 4), more work, to clear a path for his horses.

Can you hear the audible sighing from my house?

Here's the poem for all of you snow lovers out there. Unfortunately, I can't share Emerson's sentiment at this point in time. The picture of my snow-covered lane tells you way.

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 farmer'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.