The Snow-Storm

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 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 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     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.