#WingedWordsWindsday: 02/09/2022 -- Snow Daze!

 WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 15: February 9, 2022

 

Snow Daze 2022!

 

“The Snow-Storm”

By Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

 

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving over the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.

The sled and traveler 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.

 

“Spellbound”

By Emily Brontë (1818-1848)

 

The night is darkening round me,

The wild winds coldly blow;

But a tyrant spell has bound me

And I cannot, cannot go.

 

The giant trees are bending

Their bare boughs weighed with snow.

And the storm is fast descending,

And yet I cannot go.

 

Clouds beyond clouds above me,

Wastes beyond wastes below;

But nothing drear can move me;

I will not, cannot go.

 

In the late 1970s, during wintertime on the planet Mars, NASA’s Viking 2 space probe photographed widespread frost on the rocks and soil around its landing site. (Photo Credit: NASA – Public Domain)

 

LXIII: “To a Wreath of Snow”

By Emily Brontë (1818-1848)

 

O transient voyager of heaven!

⁠O silent sign of winter skies!

What adverse wind thy sail has driven

⁠To dungeons where a prisoner lies?

 

Methinks the hands that shut the Sun

⁠So sternly from this morning's brow

Might still their rebel task have done

⁠And checked a thing so frail as thou.

 

They would have done it had they known

⁠The talisman that dwelt in thee,

For all the suns that ever shone

⁠Have never been so kind to me!

 

For many a week and many a day

⁠My heart was weighed with sinking gloom

When morning rose in mourning grey

⁠And faintly lit my prison room.

 

But angel like, when I awoke,

⁠Thy silvery form, so soft and fair,

Shining through darkness, sweetly spoke

⁠Of cloudy skies and mountains bare;

 

The dearest to a mountaineer

⁠Who all lifelong has loved the snow

That crowned his native summits drear,

⁠Better than greenest plains below.

 

And voiceless, soulless, messenger,

⁠Thy presence waked a thrilling tone

That comforts me while thou art here,

⁠And will sustain when thou art gone.

 

“Before the Snow”

By Bliss Carman (1861-1929)

 

Now soon, ah, very soon, I know

The trumpets of the north will blow,

And the great winds will come to bring

The pale, wild riders of the snow.

 

Darkening the Sun with level flight,

At arrowy speed, they will alight,

Unnumbered as the desert sands,

To bivouac on the edge of night.

 

Then I, within their somber ring,

Shall hear a voice that seems to sing,

Deep, deep within my tranquil heart,

The valiant prophecy of spring.