Snowbound, a Winter Idyl by John Greenleaf Whittier

To the Memory of the Household It Describes

This Poem is Dedicated by the Author

"As the Spirit of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our fire of Wood doth the same."Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy, Book I, ch. v.

"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,Seems nowhere to alight: the whited airHides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feetDelayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sitAround the radiant fireplace, enclosedIn a tumultuous privacy of Storm."Emerson,The Snow Storm.

The sun that brief December dayRose cheerless over hills of gray,And, darkly circled, gave at noonA sadder light than waning moon.Slow tracing down the thickening skyIts mute and ominous prophecy,A portent seeming less than threat,It sank from sight before it set.A chill no coat, however stout,Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,A hard, dull bitterness of cold,That checked, mid-vein, the circling raceOf life-blood in the sharpened face,The coming of the snow-storm told.The wind blew east; we heard the roarOf Ocean on his wintry shore,And felt the strong pulse throbbing thereBeat with low rhythm our inland air.Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,Brought in the wood from out the doors,Littered the stalls, and from the mowsRaked down the herd's-grass for the cows;Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;And, sharply clashing horn on horn,Impatient down the stanchion rowsThe cattle shake their walnut bows;While, peering from his early perchUpon the scaffold's pole of birch,The cock his crested helmet bentAnd down his querulous challenge sent.

Unwarmed by any sunset lightThe gray day darkened into night,A night made hoary with the swarmAnd whirl-dance of the blinding storm,As zigzag, wavering to and fro,Crossed and recrossed the wingëd snow:And ere the early bedtime cameThe white drift piled the window-frame,And through the glass the clothes-line postsLooked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.The old familiar sights of oursTook marvellous shapes; strange domes and towersRose up where sty or corn-crib stood,Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,A fenceless drift what once was road;The bridle-post an old man satWith loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;The well-curb had a Chinese roof;And even the long sweep, high aloof,In its slant spendor, seemed to tellOf Pisa's leaning miracle.

A prompt, decisive man, no breathOur father wasted: "Boys, a path!"Well pleased (for when did farmer boyCount such a summons less than joy?)Our buskins on our feet we drew;With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,To guard our necks and ears from snow,We cut the solid whiteness through.And, where the drift was deepest, madeA tunnel walled and overlaidWith dazzling crystal: we had readOf rare Aladdin's wondrous cave,And to our own his name we gave,With many a wish the luck were oursTo test his lamp's supernal powers.We reached the barn with merry din,And roused the prisoned brutes within.The old horse thrust his long head out,And grave with wonder gazed about;The cock his lusty greeting said,And forth his speckled harem led;The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,And mild reproach of hunger looked;The hornëd patriarch of the sheep,Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep,Shook his sage head with gesture mute,And emphasized with stamp of foot.

All day the gusty north-wind boreThe loosening drift its breath before;Low circling round its southern zone,The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.No church-bell lent its Christian toneTo the savage air, no social smokeCurled over woods of snow-hung oak.A solitude made more intenseBy dreary-voicëd elements,The shrieking of the mindless wind,The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,And on the glass the unmeaning beatOf ghostly finger-tips of sleet.Beyond the circle of our hearthNo welcome sound of toil or mirthUnbound the spell, and testifiedOf human life and thought outside.We minded that the sharpest earThe buried brooklet could not hear,The music of whose liquid lipHad been to us companionship,And, in our lonely life, had grownTo have an almost human tone.

As night drew on, and, from the crestOf wooded knolls that ridged the west,The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sankFrom sight beneath the smothering bank,We piled, with care, our nightly stackOf wood against the chimney-back, --The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,And on its top the stout back-stick;The knotty forestick laid apart,And filled between with curious artThe ragged brush; then, hovering near,We watched the first red blaze appear,Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleamOn whitewashed wall and sagging beam,Until the old, rude-furnished roomBurst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;While radiant with a mimic flameOutside the sparkling drift became,And through the bare-boughed lilac-treeOur own warm hearth seemed blazing free.The crane and pendent trammels showed,The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed;While childish fancy, prompt to tellThe meaning of the miracle,Whispered the old rhyme: "Under the tree,When fire outdoors burns merrily,There the witches are making tea."The moon above the eastern woodShone at its full; the hill-range stoodTransfigured in the silver flood,Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,Dead white, save where some sharp ravineTook shadow, or the sombre greenOf hemlocks turned to pitchy blackAgainst the whiteness at their back.For such a world and such a nightMost fitting that unwarming light,Which only seemd where'er it fellTo make the coldness visible.

Shut in from all the world without,We sat the clean-winged hearth about,Content to let the north-wind roarIn baffled rage at pane and door,While the red logs before us beatThe frost-line back with tropic heat;And ever, when a louder blastShook beam and rafter as it passed,The merrier up its roaring draughtThe great throat of the chimney laughed;The house-dog on his paws outspreadLaid to the fire his drowsy head,The cat's dark silhouette on the wallA couchant tiger's seemed to fall;And, for the winter fireside meet,Between the andirons' straddling feet,The mug of cider simmered slow,The apples sputtered in a row,And, close at hand, the basket stoodWith nuts from brown October's wood.

What matter how the night behaved?What matter how the north-wind raved?Blow high, blow low, not all its snowCould quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.O Time and Change! -- with hair as grayAs was my sire's that winter day,How strange it seems with so much gone,Of life and love, to still live on!Ah, brother! only I and thouAre left of all that circle now, --The dear home faces whereuponThat fitful firelight paled and shone.Henceforward, listen as we will,The voices of that hearth are still;Look where we may, the wide earth o'er,Those lighted faces smile no more.We tread the paths their feet have worn,We sit beneath their orchard trees,We hear, like them, the hum of beesAnd rustle of the bladed corn;We turn the pages that they read,Their written words we linger o'er.But in the sun they cast no shade,No voice is heard, no sign is made,No step is on the conscious floor!Yet love will dream, and Faith will trust(Since He who knows our need is just),That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.Alas for him who never seesThe stars shine through his cypress-trees!Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,Nor looks to see the breaking dayAcross the mourful marbles play!Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,The truth to flesh and sense unknown,That Life is ever lord of Death,And Love can never lose its own!

We sped the time with stories old,Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,Or stammered from our school-book lore"The Chief of Gambia's golden shore."How often since, when all the landWas clay in Slavery's shaping hand,As if a far-blown trumpet stirredThe languorous sin-sick air, I heard:"Does not the voice of reason cry,Claim the first right which Nature gave,From the red scourge of bondage to fly,Nor deign to live a burdened slave!"Our father rode again his rideOn Memphremagog's wooded side;Sat down again to moose and sampIn trapper's hut and Indian camp;Lived o'er the old idyllic easeBeneath St. François' hemlock-trees;Again for him the moonlight shoneOn Norman cap and bodiced zone;Again he heard the violin playWhich led the village dance away,And mingled in its merry whirlThe grandam and the laughing girl.Or, nearer home, our steps he ledWhere Salisbury's level marshes spreadMile-wide as flied the laden bee;Where merry mowers, hale and strong,Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths alongThe low green prairies of the sea.We shared the fishing off Boar's Head,And round the rocky Isles of ShoalsThe hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;The chowder on the sand-beach made,Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,With spoons of clam-shell from the pot.We heard the tales of witchcraft old,And dream and sign and marvel toldTo sleepy listeners as they layStretched idly on the salted hay,Adrift along the winding shores,When favoring breezes deigned to blowThe square sail of the gundelowAnd idle lay the useless oars.

Our mother, while she turned her wheelOr run the new-knit stocking-heel,Told how the Indian hordes came downAt midnight on Concheco town,And how her own great-uncle boreHis cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.Recalling, in her fitting phrase,So rich and picturesque and free(The common unrhymed poetryOf simple life and country ways),The story of her early days, --She made us welcome to her home;Old hearths grew wide to give us room;We stole with her a frightened lookAt the gray wizard's conjuring-book,The fame whereof went far and wideThrough all the simple country side;We heard the hawks at twilight play,The boat-horn on Piscataqua,The loon's weird laughter far away;We fished her little trout-brook, knewWhat flowers in wood and meadow grew,What sunny hillsides autumn-brownShe climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,Saw where in sheltered cove and bay,The ducks' black squadron anchored lay,And heard the wild-geese calling loudBeneath the gray November cloud.Then, haply, with a look more grave,And soberer tone, some tale she gaveFrom painful Sewel's ancient tome,Beloved in every Quaker home,Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint, --Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint! --Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,And water-butt and bread-cask failed,And cruel, hungry eyes pursuedHis portly presence, mad for food,With dark hints muttered under breathOf casting lots for life or death,Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,To be himself the sacrifice.Then, suddenly, as if to saveThe good man from his living grave,A ripple on the water grew,A school of porpoise flashed in view."Take, eat," he said, "and be content;These fishes in my stead are sentBy Him who gave the tangled ramTo spare the child of Abraham."

Our uncle, innocent of books,Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,The ancient teachers never dumbOf Nature's unhoused lyceum.In moons and tides and weather wise,He read the clouds as prophecies,And foul or fair could well divine,By many an occult hint and sign,Holding the cunning-warded keysTo all the woodcraft mysteries;Himself to Nature's heart so nearThat all her voices in his earOf beast or bird had meanings clear,Like Apollonius of old,Who knew the tales the sparrows told,Or Hermes, who interpretedWhat the sage cranes of Nilus said;A simple, guileless, childlike man,Content to live where life began;Strong only on his native grounds,The little world of sights and soundsWhose girdle was the parish bounds,Whereof his fondly partial prideThe common features magnified,As Surrey hills to mountains grewIn White of Selborne's loving view, --He told how teal and loon he shot,And how the eagle's eggs he got,The feats on pond and river done,The prodigies of rod and gun;Till, warming with the tales he told,Forgotten was the outside cold,The bitter wind unheeded blew,From ripening corn the pigeons flew,The partridge drummed i' the wood, the minkWent fishing down the river-brink.The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,Peered from the doorway of his cell;The muskrat plied the mason's trade,And tier by tier his mud-walls laid;And from the shagbark overheadThe grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheerAnd voice in dreams I see and hear, --The sweetest woman ever FatePerverse denied a household mate,Who, lonely, homeless, not the lessFound peace in love's unselfishness,And welcome wheresoe'er she went,A calm and gracious element,Whose presence seemed the sweet incomeAnd womanly atmosphere of home, --Called up her girlhood memories,The huskings and the apple-bees,The sleigh-rides and the summer sails,Weaving through all the poor detailsAnd homespuun warp of circumstanceA golden woof-thread of romance.For well she kept her genial moodAnd simple faith of maidenhood;Before her still a cloud-land lay,The mirage loomed across her way;The morning dew, that dries so soonWith others, glistened at her noon;Through years of toil and soil and care,From glossy tress to thin gray hair,All unprofaned she held apartThe virgin fancies of the heart.Be shame to him of woman bornWho hath for such but thought of scorn.

There, too, our elder sister pliedHer evening task the stand beside;A full, rich nature, free to trust,Truthful and almost sternly just,Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,And make her generous thought a fact,Keeping with many a light disguiseThe secret of self-sacrifice.O heart sore-tried! thou hast the bestThat Heaven itself coud give thee, -- rest,Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!How many a poor one's blessing wentWith thee beneath the low green tentWhose curtain never outward swings!

As one who held herself a partOf all she saw, and let her heartAgainst the household bosom lean,Upon the motley-braided matOur yougest and our dearest sat,Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,Now bathed in the unfading greenAnd holy peace of Paradise.Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,Or from the shade of saintly palms,Or silver reach of river calms,Do those large eyes behold me still?With me one little year ago: --The chill weight of the winter snowFor months upon her grave has lain;And now, when summer south-winds blowAnd brier and harebell bloom again,I tread the pleasant paths we trod,I see the violet-sprinkled sodWhereon she leaned, too frail and weakThe hillside flowers she loved to seek,Yet following me where'er I wentWith dark eyes full of love's content.The birds are glad; the brier-rose fillsThe air with sweetness; all the hillsStretch green to June's unclouded sky;But still I wait with ear and eye,For something gone which should be nigh,A loss in all familiar things,In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,Am I not richer than of old?Safe in thy immortality,What change can reach the wealth I hold?What chnce can mar the pearl and goldThy love hath left in trust with me?And while in late life's late afternoon,Where cool and long the shadows grow,I walk to meet the night that soonShall shape and shadow overflow,I cannot feel that thou art far,Since near at need the angels are;And when the sunset gates unbar,Shall I not see thee waiting stand,And, white against the evening star,The welcome of thy beckoning hand?

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,The master of the local schoolHeld at the fire his favored place,Its warm glow lit a laughing faceFresh-hued and fair, where scarce appearedThe uncertain prophecy of beard.He teased the mitten-blinded cat,Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat,Sang songs, and told us what befallsIn classic Dartmouth's college halls.Born the wild Northern hills among,From whence his yeoman father wrungBy patient toil subsistence scant,Not competence and yet not want,He early gained the power to payHis cheerful, self-reliant way;Could doff at ease his scholar's gownTo peddle wares from town to town;Or through the long vacation's reachIn lonely lowland districts teach,Where all the droll experience foundAt stranger hearths in boarding round,The moonlit skater's keen delight,The sleigh-drive through the frosty night,The rustic party, with its roughAccompaniment of blind-man's-buff,And whirling-plate, and forfeits paid,His winter task a pastime made.Happy the snow-locked homes whereinHe tuned his merry violin,Or played the athlete in the barn,Or held the good dame's winding-yarn,Or mirth-provoking versions toldOf classic legends rare and old,Wherein the scenes of Greece and RomeHad all the commonplace of home,And little seemed at best the odds'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods;Where Pindus-born Arachthus tookThe guise of any grist-mill brok,And dread Olympus at his willBecame a huckleberry hill.

A careless boy that night he seemed;But at his desk he had the lookAnd air of one who wisely schemed,And hostage from the future tookIn trainëd thought and lore of book.Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as heShall Freedom's young apostles be,Who, following in War's bloody trail,Shall every lingering wrong assail;All chains from limb and spirit strike,Uplift the black and white alike;Scatter before their swift advanceThe darkness and the ignorance,The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth,Made murder pastime, and the hellOf prison-torture possible;The cruel lie of caste refute,Old forms remould, and substituteFor Slavery's lash the freeman's will,For blind routine, wise-handed skill;A school-house plant on every hill,Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thenceThe quick wires of intelligence;Till North and South together broughtShall own the same electric thought,In peace a common flag salute,And, side by side in labor's freeAnd unresentful revalry,Harvest the fields wherein they fought.

Another guest that winter nightFlashed back from lustrous eyes the light.Unmarked by time, and yet not young,The honeyed music of her tongueAnd words of meekness scarcely toldA nature passionate and bold,Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,Its milder features dwarded besideHer unbent will's majestic pride.She sat among us, at the test,A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,Rebuking with her cultured phraseOur homeliness of words and ways.A certain pard-like, treacherous graceSwayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash,Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;And under low brows, black with night,Rayed out at times a dangerous light;The sharp heat-lightnings of her facePresaging ill to him whom FateCondemned to share her love or hate.A woman tropical, intenseIn thought and act, in soul and sense,She blended in a like degreeThe vixen and the devotee,Revealing with each freak of feintThe temper of Petruchio's Kate,The raptures of Siena's saint.Her tapering hand and rounded wristHad facile power to form a fist;The warm, dark languish of her eyesWas never safe from wrath's surprise.Brows saintly calm and lips devoutKnew every change of scowl and pout;And the sweet voice had notes more highAnd shrill for social battle-cry.

Since then what old cathedral townHas missed her pilgrim staff and gown,What convent-gate has held its lockAgainst the challenge of her knock!Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares,Up sea-set Malta's rocky stair,Gray olive slopes of hills that hemThy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,Or startling on her desert throneThe crazy Queen of LebanonWith claims fantastic as her own,Her tireless feet have held their way;And still, unrestful. bowed, and gray,She watches under Eastern skies,With hope each day renewed and fresh,The Lord's quick coming in the flesh,Whereof she dreams and prophecies!

Where'er her troubled path may be,The Lord's sweet pity with her go!The outward wayward life we see,The hidden springs we may not know.Nor is it given us to discernWhat threads the fatal sisters spun,Through what ancestral years has runThe sorrow with the woman born,What forged her cruel chain of moods,What set her feet in solitudes,And held the love within her mute,What mingled madness in the bloodA life-long discord and annoy,Water of tears with oil of joy,And hid within the folded budPeversities of flower and fruit.It is not ours to separateThe tangled skien of will and fate,To show what metes and bounds should standUpon the soul's debatable land,And between choice and ProvidenceDivide the circle of events;But He who knows our frame is just,Merciful and compassionate,And full of sweet assurancesAnd hope for all the language is,That He remembereth we are dust!

At last the great logs, crumbling low,Sent out a dull and duller glow,The bull's-eye watch that hung in view,Ticking its weary circuit through,Pointed with mutely warning signIts black hand to the hour of nine.That sign the pleasant circle. broke:My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,Knocked from its bowl the refuse grayAnd laid it tenderly away;Then roused himself to safely coverThe dull red brands with ashes over,And while, with care, our mother laidThe work aside, her steps she stayedOne moment, seeking to expressHer grateful sense of happinessFor food and shelter, warmth and health,And love's contentment more than wealth,With simple wishes (not the weak,Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek,But such as warm the generous heart,O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)That none might lack, that bitter night,For bread and clothing, warmth and light.

Within our beds awhile we heardThe wind that round the gables roared,With now and then a ruder shock,Which made our very bedsteads rock.We heard the loosened clapboards tost,The board-nails snapping in the frost;And on us, through the unplastered wall,Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.But sleep stole on, as sleep will doWhen hearts are light and life is new;Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,Till in the summer-land of dreamsThey softened to the sound of streams,Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,And lapsing waves on quiet shores.

Next morn we wakened with the shoutOf merry voices high and clear;And saw the teamsters drawing nearTo break the drifted highways out.Down the long hillside treading slowWe saw the half-buried oxen go,Shaking the snow from heads uptost,Their straining nostrils white with frost.Before our door the stragglins trainDrew up, an added team to gain.The elders threshed their hands a-cold,Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokesFrom lip to lip; the younger folksDown the loose snow-banks, wrestling rolled,Then toiled again the cavalcadeO'er windy hill, through clogged ravine,And woodland paths that wound betweenLow drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed.From every barn a team afoot,At every house a new recruit,Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law,Haply the watchful young men sawSweet doorway pictures of the curlsAnd curious eyes of merry girls,Lifting their hands in mock defenceAgainst the snow-ball's compliments,And reading in each missive tostThe charm with Eden never lost.

We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound;And, following where the teamsters led,The wise old Doctor went his round,Just pausing at our door to say,In the brief autocratic wayOf one who, prompt at Duty's callWas free to urge her claim on all,That some poor neighbor sick abedAt night our mother's aid would need.For, one in generous thought and deedWhat mattered in the sufferer's sightThe Quaker matron's inward light,The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed?All hearts confess the saints electWho, twain in faith, in love agree,And melt not in an acid sectThe Christian pearl of charity!

So days went on: a week had passedSince the great world was heard from last.The Almanac we studied o'er,Read and reread our little storeOf books and pamphlets, scarce a score;One harmless novel, mostly hidFrom younger eyes, a book forbid,And poetry (or good or bad,A single book was all we had),Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse,A stranger to the heathen Nine,Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,The wars of David and the Jews.At last the flourndering carrier boreThe village paper to our door.Lo! broadening outward as we read,To warmer zones the horizon spread;In panoramic length unrolledWe saw the marvels that it told.Before us passed the painted Creeks,And daft McGregor on his raidsIn Costa Rica's everglades.And up Taygetos winding slowRode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks,A Turk's head at each saddle-bow!Welcome to us its week-old news,Its corner for the rustic MuseIts monthly gauge of snow and rain,Its record, mingling in a breathThe wedding bell and dirge of death:Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,The latest culprit sent to jail;Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,Its vendue sales and goods at cost,And traffic calling loud for gain.We felt the stir of hall and street,The pulse of life that round us beat;The chill embargo of the snowWas melted in the genial glow;Wide swung again our ice-locked door,And all the world was ours once more!

Clasp, Angel of the backword lookAnd folded wings of ashen grayAnd voice of echoes far away,The brazen covers of thy book;The weird palimpsest old and vast,Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past;Where, closely mingling, pale and glowThe characters of joy and woe;The monographs of outlived years,Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,Green hills of life that slope to death,And haunts of home, whose vistaed treesShade off to mournful cypresses,With the white amaranths underneath.Even while I look, I can but heedThe restless sands' incessant fall,Importunate hours that hours succeedEach clamorous with its own sharp need,And duty keeping pace with all.Shut down and clasp with heavy lids;I hear again the voice that bidsThe dreamer leave his dream midwayFor larger hopes and graver fears:Life greatens in these later years,The century's aloe flowers to-day!

Yet, haply, in some lull of life,Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,The wordling's eyes shall gather dew,Dreaming in throngful city waysOf winter joys his boyhood knew;And dear and early friends -- the fewWho yet remain -- shall pause to viewThese Flemish pictures of old days;Sit with me by the homestead hearthAnd stretch the hands of memory forthTo warm them at the wood-fire's blaze!And thanks untraced to lips unknownShall greet me like the odors blownFrom unseen meadows newly mown,Or lilies floating in some pond,Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;The traveller owns the grateful senseOf sweetness near, he knows not whence,And, pausing takes with forehead bareThe benediction of the air.