Winter Poems

We've had cold and snow in the Boston area over the past few weeks. I know there are places where the weather has been worse, and that to complain about my popsicle toes is really more like whining. So, if I can't beat the cold, I can at least try to enjoy it. Not by skating or skiing - I've had enough broken bones from riding horseback, thank you very much. 

I'll imagine a fire in my fireplace, which is at least decorative even if I don’t want to test the chimney. I’ll enjoy a hot cup of cocoa (made with soy milk, but cocoa still), and read some poetry. What else should a former English major, some one who holds the graduate degree that's been equated with "piled higher and deeper" - do?

Enjoy!

Wallace Stevens

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

and, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

from Harmonium, 1921)

Robert Frost

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

(from New Hampshire, 1923)

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Snow Storm

No hawk hangs over in this air:

The urgent snow is everywhere.

The wing adroiter than a sail

Must lean away from such a gale,

Abandoning its straight intent,

Or else expose tough ligament

And tender flesh to what before

Meant dampened feathers, nothing more.

Forceless upon our backs there fall

Infrequent flakes hexagonal,

Devised in many a curious style

To charm our safety for a while,

Where close to earth like mice we go

Under the horizontal snow.