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  #1  
Unread 01-23-2016, 09:03 AM
Maryann Corbett's Avatar
Maryann Corbett Maryann Corbett is offline
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Default Snow poems (again)

With so much snow making so much news all over the country, perhaps it would be appropriate to have a fresh thread of snow poems.

They've been a popular topic in the past: here's a link to a list of threads, so you'll see and enjoy the ones we've mentioned in past years.

My own favorite, which I don't think has been mentioned before, is Tom Disch's "Ode to a Blizzard." (Pardon me for just linking; the format's tricky.) I love its disorderly order, which really does remind me of the process of windy snowfall.

EDITING TO CORRECT LINKS:

Here's one: http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=21992

Here's the second: http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=9671

And the third: http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=478

And the fourth: http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=425

Last edited by Maryann Corbett; 01-23-2016 at 10:53 AM.
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  #2  
Unread 01-23-2016, 10:01 AM
Gregory Palmerino Gregory Palmerino is offline
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I'm with you Maryann.

There's an interesting take on a snow poem in Autumn Sky today, here.

Waiting for snow as I write.

Cheers,
Greg
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  #3  
Unread 01-23-2016, 10:17 AM
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W.F. Lantry W.F. Lantry is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Maryann Corbett View Post
They've been a popular topic in the past: here's a link to a list of threads, so you'll see and enjoy the ones we've mentioned in past years.
Rats. Can't get the link to work...
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  #4  
Unread 01-23-2016, 10:44 AM
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W.F. Lantry W.F. Lantry is offline
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Assuming we'll eventually find the old threads, I went looking for one unlikely to have been posted (?). I can't immediately find the original latin, so I guess we'll just have to trust Christopher Smart:

On A Lady Throwing Snow-Balls At Her Lover

When, Wanton Fair, the snowy orb you throw,
I feel a fire before unknown in snow.
E'en coldest snow I find has pow'r to warm
My breast, when flung by Julia's lovely arm.
T'elude love's pow'rful arts I strive in vain,
If ice and snow can latent fires contain.
These frolics leave: the force of beauty prove,
With equal passion cool my ardent love.

.
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  #5  
Unread 01-23-2016, 05:45 PM
Gregory Dowling Gregory Dowling is offline
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Thanks, Maryann, for starting this thread - and for reminding us of the old threads. It's always fascinating to see just how much interesting stuff there is in the archives of this site. And I'm also intrigued to see my own contributions to two of these threads - contributions that in some cases I have no memory at all of having made; I had completely forgotten about the Ted Hughes poem, for instance, that closes one of the threads.

As the resuscitated threads contain most of the poems that immediately leap to mind on the topic I'll have to think a while before making a fresh contribution but I promise to come back.

In the meantime thanks for the Tom Disch poem, Maryann, and for the Christopher Smart, Bill, neither of which I knew.
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  #6  
Unread 01-23-2016, 06:05 PM
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I see the link to the John Davidson poem no longer works. You can find most of it on p 82 here. Unfortunately a part is missing at the end. I'll post a better link if I can find one. Parts I and II of this poem appear in several places on the web as if they were the whole poem. It has 5 parts.

Last edited by John Beaton; 01-23-2016 at 06:13 PM. Reason: added comments
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  #7  
Unread 01-24-2016, 04:46 AM
Nigel Mace Nigel Mace is offline
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I admit this a favourite of mine, which it is possible that I've posted elsewhere on the site in the past. (I've tried to trace it but can't succeed - so apologies if it seems repetitious.)
Although the snow works as a central setting for the poem's larger matter, I feel that its evocation of a Grampian blizzard earns it a place here - and it also combines that with a lightning storm which, we gather from TV news has been a part of the latest East Coast US blizzards.

BIRTHDAY

William Soutar

There were three men o' Scotland
Wha rade intill the nicht
Wi' nae mune lifted owre their crouns
Nor onie stern for licht:

Nane but the herryin' houlet,
The broun mouse, and the taed,
Kent whan their horses clapper'd by
And whatna road they rade.

Nae man spak tae his brither,
Nor ruggit at the rein;
But drave straucht on owre burn and brae
Or half the nicht was gaen.

Nae man spak tae his brither,
Nor lat his hand draw in;
But drave straucht on owre ford and fell
Or nicht was nearly dune.

There came a flaucht o' levin
That brocht nae thunner ca'
But left ahint a lanely lowe
That wudna gang awa.

And richt afore the horsemen,
Whaur grumly nicht had been,
Stude a' the Grampian Mountains
Wi' the dark howes atween.

Up craigie cleuch and corrie
They rade wi' stany soun',
And saftly thru the lichted mirk
The switherin' snaw cam doun.

They gaed by birk and rowan,
They gaed by pine and fir;
Aye on they gaed or nocht but snaw
And the roch whin was there.

Nae man brac'd back the bridle
Yet ilka fute stood still
As thru the flichterin' floichan-drift
A beast cam doun the hill.

It steppit like a stallion,
Wha's heid haud's up a horn,
And weel the men o' Scotland kent
It was the unicorn.

It steppit like a stallion,
Snaw-white and siller-bricht,
And on its back there was a bairn
Wha' low'd in his ain licht.

And baith gaed by richt glegly
As day was at the daw;
And glisterin' owre hicht and howe
They saftly smool'd awa.

Nae man but socht his brither
And look't him in the e'en,
And sware that he wud gang a' gates
To cry what he had seen:

There were three men o' Scotland
A' frazit and forforn;
But on the Grampian Mountains
They saw the unicorn.
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Unread 01-24-2016, 05:35 AM
Clive Watkins Clive Watkins is offline
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Here is a snowy scene I have always admired, though I am not sure if it fits tightly within the parameters of this thread.

In June 2001 I posted the following passage from “The Winter Morning Walk” by William Cowper (1731-1800), partly in response to an original poem by John Beaton (who in those days went under the moniker Porridgeface). “The Winter Morning Walk” constitutes Book 5 of his long and digressive "conversation poem" in six books, The Task, published in London in 1785. I imagine that Cowper is remembered these days (if at all) for his "Olney Hymns" and for such anthology pieces as "The Diverting History of John Gilpin", "Epitaph on a Hare" and "The Poplar-Field", but he was a much more various and interesting writer than such selections suggest.

As I said in 2001, for me the peculiar savour of this passage – and of others like it – lies in the way in which Cowper, while writing from within a style that may seem self-consciously literary, nonetheless finds a personal eloquence in describing the countryside and the countrymen he knew well: vivid detail shines through the conventional locutions which encrust it. In particular, his description of the woodman’s dog at the end of this passage is a little tour de force, combining imaginative observation with a skilful management of syntax and blank verse.

The scene is a frosty morning; snow lies on the ground (the "dazzling deluge" of the second line quoted).

The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents,
And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
Conspicuous, and, in bright apparel clad
And fledg'd with icy feathers, nod superb.
The cattle mourn in corners where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder; not like hung'ring man,
Fretful if unsupply'd; but silent, meek,
And patient of the slow-pac'd swain's delay.
He from the stack carves out th' accustom'd load,
Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft,
His broad keen knife into the solid mass:
Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away: no needless care,
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanc'd weight.
Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcern’d
The cheerful haunts of man; to wield the axe
And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,
From morn to eve his solitary task.
Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears
And tail cropp’d short, half lurcher and half cur,
His dog attends him. Close behind his heel
Now creeps he slow; and now with many a frisk
Wide-scamp’ring, snatches up the drifted snow
With iv’ry teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
Then shakes his powder’d coat, and barks for joy.

Clive Watkins
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  #9  
Unread 01-24-2016, 06:38 AM
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Janice D. Soderling Janice D. Soderling is offline
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I haven't been through all the other threads, so I'm taking my chances.

Here is a snow poem by Philip Dacey which might not be exactly in the box so chances are it hasn't been posted previously.

Rondel

A beautiful snow falls on a bed,
Amazing the man and woman there.
It falls between and over them where
Just before they lay close and naked.

They wonder if anything they said
Or did called down so cold through the air
This beautiful snow onto their bed
To amaze anyone who would love there.

They wonder if snowmen can be wed,
And if white is what they'll always wear,
And if lovers should sing or shiver
As they watch fall the uninvited
And beautiful snow onto their bed.
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  #10  
Unread 01-24-2016, 07:47 AM
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Maryann Corbett Maryann Corbett is offline
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Thanks, friends, for these contributions! I have another one.

Snow-Flakes
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1882

Out of the bosom of the Air,
xxOut of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
xxOver the harvest-fields forsaken,
xxxxSilent, and soft, and slow
xxxxDescends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
xxSuddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
xxIn the white countenance confession,
xxxxThe troubled sky reveals
xxxxThe grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
xxSlowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
xxLong in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
xxxxNow whispered and revealed
xxxxTo wood and field.
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