"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Wednesday, January 11, 2012

W.H. Auden - Night Mail


W.H. Auden, 1907-1973


45661 Vernon in an early British Railways livery (photo by T. Lewis, courtesy of Mark A. Hoofe)



This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.
Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.
Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?





Wikipedia

Night Mail is a 1936 documentary film about a London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) mail train from London to Scotland, produced by the GPO Film Unit. A poem by English poet W. H. Auden was written for it, used in the closing few minutes, as was music by Benjamin Britten. The two men also collaborated on a documentary on the line from London to Portsmouth, The Way to the Sea, also in 1936. The film was directed by Harry Watt and Basil Wright, and narrated by John Grierson and Stuart Legg. The Brazilian filmmaker Alberto Cavalcanti was sound director. It starred Royal Scot 6115 Scots Guardsman.

As recited in the film, the poem's rhythm imitates the train's wheels as they clatter over track sections, beginning slowly but picking up speed so that by the time the penultimate verse the narrator is at a breathless pace. As the train slows toward its destination the final verse is more sedate. The opening lines are "This is the Night Mail crossing the border / Bringing the cheque and the postal order". The copyright on the film has expired after 50 years, however some sources assert that the W.H. Auden poem however remains copyright as a written piece. The musical score was first published in 2002.

Such is the status of the film, it was used as inspiration for a British Rail advertisement of the 1980s, the "concerto ad".




Night Mail - (1936) - Part 1





Night Mail - (1936) - Part 2





Night Mail - (1936) - Part 3






Robert Louis Stevenson - From a Railway Carriage

Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894







Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.
Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!






Notes

This poem is similar in many ways to Auden's http://reslater.blogspot.com/2012/01/wh-auden-night-mail.html


Commentary
August 16, 2010

When looking for inspiration for a piece of writing, I often take time to ponder what specific occurrences inspired the verse of the greatest poets. Of course there are those significant, overwhelming things that none of us can get away from; ever flowing reservoirs that can be dipped into time and time again and still provide something to get the ink flowing – the ‘big’ issues such as life, death, love, loss. Then there are the altogether simpler things, the tiny fragments of beauty and wonder that can be magnified by a selection of words; the first ray of sun after rainfall, a flower bursting into bloom…all perfectly poetic. Though in theory nothing should be strictly out of bounds – or at least, almost nothing – there are some things that it’s hard to muster much excitement for, scribble about enthusiastically or give an air of elegance to. One such subject is surely public transport; as practical and undoubtedly necessary as it is, even the most accomplished of bards would struggle when faced with points of inspiration such as delays, jams and replacement services.

Yet the very topic is gearing up a range of writers, with the most famous network of public transport in the country – the London Underground – at the centre of a major poetic project which aims to collect 270 odes, each correlating to an individual station in the network. It does sound like an interesting idea, and I’m thinking that The Tube is an exception to the rule; there is something about it that sparks the senses, be it the sheer variety of stations and passengers; bright-eyed and bushy tailed tourists alongside suited and booted (and slightly bored) businessmen and women. The zigzagging of lines meaning if you so wish, you could embark on a mini adventure into the unknown. And also the very fact that actually being underground gives a slight eerie edge to proceedings. The few times I’ve joined the hoards while in the capital have certainly been eventful, thanks to train doors literally closing on me with the rush to get on board and a fellow passenger deciding to use my shoulder as an alternative to a pillow. Back home, as I’m a slave to bus timetables (which are seldom correct) the predominant emotions evoked are frustration, annoyance and impatience, prone to far too many near misses, drivers who seem to be more interested in skipping as many stops as possible and revving engines that seem to taunt as you watch hope ride away into the distance… (that’s more ridiculously exaggerated drama than the makings of a poetic masterpiece).

A different, perhaps more conventionally poetic train journey is detailed in Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem, taken from his A Child’s Garden of Verses – not, funnily enough, Songs of Travel and Other Verses, even though it would be fitting there. The connection to childhood is evoked as it is reminiscent of ‘old-fashioned’ over-ground train journeys complete with all their numerous sights glimpsed as you go chugging by, the verse’s rhythm echoing the pace of the vehicle along with the scenes jostling for the passenger’s attention. It has been suggested that there is something about trains that appeals to poets above all other modes of transport. Whether this is true, who can say? They’re certain more rhythmic than a bumpy old bus.





Robert Louis Stevenson
From a Railway Carriage




Night Mail







Wilfred Owen - The Send Off


Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918



Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.
Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.
So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours:
We never heard to which front these were sent.
Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.
Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild trainloads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to still village wells
Up half-known roads.


Some railways journeys were both sickening and mind-numbingly frightening in equal measure. One thinks of those trains of death approaching the watchtower gateway at Auschwitz. Here Owen, possibly the greatest first world war poet, drives home the experience of the ordinary soldier travelling to incomprehensible horror. - Peter Ashley

A Collection of Railway Poems

Railroad/Train Poetry

Marigolds grow wild on platforms, Peggy Poole, Publ July 11, 1996; 192 pgs

The coming of the railways changed the economic and social fabric of Britain beyond recognition. Railways often generate an emotional response in people; the romance of travel, the excitement of departure and the pleasures of arrival, plus the thrill of the machinery itself, appeal to the emotions. This anthology of over 160 poems about railways and rail travel includes works by poets as varied as Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, W.H. Auden, Thomas Hardy, Wendy Cope, Philip Larkin, John Betjeman and Louis MacNeice. The editor of this collection, Peggy Poole, is herself a poet, and was drawn to the magic of railways when changing trains at Preston station, which led to the publication of this anthology. The poems range from the simply lyrical to the rudely mechanical, and are grouped in six themes to represent the different aspects of rail travel.



Railway Lines - a website dedicate to railroad poetry:

  • 150017 by A.Boodoo

  • INTERCITY country by A.Boodoo

  • Leaves on the line by A.Boodoo

  • Night Mail 98 by A.Boodoo

  • Night Train Circa 1904 by Bill Burns

  • The First Hot Day in Spring by Martin Reed

  • The Little Toy Train by Bill Burns

  • The passing train by A.Boodoo

  • The train home by A.Boodoo

  • The Wimbleware song

  • Train Scape by Bill Burns

  • XC evening by A.Boodoo



  • Peter Ashley's Top 10 Railway poems
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/nov/14/top10s.railway.poems

    Peter Ashley is the editor of Railway Rhymes, an Everyman collection of poems celebrating the railway and published to coincide with the opening of St Pancras International. Below, Peter Ashley picks his favourite poems from the anthology including commentary to select poems:


    Pershore Station, or A Liverish Journey First Class
    by John Betjeman

    The train at Pershore station was waiting that Sunday night
    Gas light on the platform, in my carriage electric light,
    Gas light on frosty evergreens, electric on Empire wood,
    The Victorian world and the present in a moment's neighbourhood.
    There was no one about but a conscript who was saying good-bye to his love
    On the windy weedy platform with the sprinkled stars above
    When sudden the waiting stillness shook with the ancient spells
    Of an older world than all our worlds in the sound of the Pershore bells.
    They were ringing them down for Evensong in the lighted abbey near,
    Sounds which had poured through apple boughs for seven centuries here.

    With Guilt, Remorse, Eternity the void within me fills
    And I thought of her left behind me in the Herefordshire hills.
    I remembered her defencelessness as I made my heart a stone
    Till she wove her self-protection round and left me on my own.
    And plunged in a deep self pity I dreamed of another wife
    And lusted for freckled faces and lived a separate life.
    One word would have made her love me, one word would have made her turn
    But the word I never murmured and now I am left to burn.
    Evesham, Oxford and London. The carriage is new and smart.
    I am cushioned and soft and heated with a deadweight in my heart.


    Betjeman usually makes an ideal travelling companion in his railway poetry but on this journey we would discreetly move to another compartment to leave him alone with his thoughts. This is the perfect evocation of the Sunday Fear, that dead time when thoughts crowd in of Monday's business. The sound of evening bells are as melancholy to me as the Antiques Roadshow theme tune.*



    Great Central Railway Sheffield Victoria to Banbury
    by John Betjeman

    "Unmitigated England"
    Came swinging down the line
    That day the February sun
    Did crisp and crystal shine.
    Dark red at Kirkby Bentinck stood
    A steeply gabled farm
    'Mid ash trees and a sycamore
    In charismatic calm.
    A village street {---} a manor house {---}
    A church {---} then, tally ho!
    We pounded through a housing scheme
    With tellymasts a-row,
    Where cars of parked executives
    Did regimented wait
    Beside administrative blocks
    Within the factory gate.
    She waved to us from Hucknall South
    As we hooted round a bend,
    From a curtained front-window did
    The diesel driver's friend.
    Through cuttings deep to Nottingham
    Precariously we wound;
    The swallowing tunnel made the train
    Seem London's Underground.
    Above the fields of Leicestershire
    On arches we were borne.

    And the rumble of the railway drowned
    The thunder of the Quorn;
    And silver shone the steeples out
    Above the barren boughs;
    Colts in a paddock ran from us
    But not the solid cows;
    And quite where Rugby Central is
    Does only Rugby know.
    We watched the empty platform wait
    And sadly saw it go.
    By now the sun of afternoon
    Showed ridge and furrow shadows
    And shallow unfamiliar lakes
    Stood shivering in the meadows.
    Is Woodford church or Hinton church
    The one I ought to see?
    Or were they both too much restored
    In 1883?
    I do not know. Towards the west
    A trail of glory runs
    And we leave the old Great Central line
    For Banbury and buns.



    Railway Rhymes
    by CL Graves

    "When books are pow'rless to beguile
    And papers only stir my bile,
    For solace and relief I flee
    To Bradshaw or the ABC
    And find the best of recreations
    In studying the names of stations."


    This poem was fortuitously discovered after I'd settled on the title for my anthology. This is a jolly romp through a railway gazetteer, seeking out station names that not only scan but also give us a sense of the decidedly odd in English topography. I've always loved the name Stogumber, (good name for a Dickens' curate perhaps), still on the West Somerset line.*



    Harviston End
    by Peter Ling

    "I looked out of the train,
    And I suddenly saw the empty station
    As we hurtled through, with a hollow roar . . .
    'Harviston End' . . . It was dark and dead"


    A quiet hymn to all that we've lost. It's all here, the sights, sounds and smells of a country station about to close. I've searched my railway book shelves to see if Harviston End existed, but it appears not. But the word 'end' in the title goes much further than the white-pebbled station name.*



    Adlestrop
    by Edward Thomas

    Yes, I remember Adlestrop –
    The name because one afternoon
    Of heat the express-train drew up there
    Unwontedly. It was late June.
    The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
    No one left and no one came
    On the bare platform. What I saw
    Was Adlestrop – only the name
    And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
    And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
    No whit less still and lonely fair
    Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
    And for that minute a blackbird sang
    Close by, and round him, mistier,
    Farther and farther, all the birds
    Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.



    Restaurant Car
    by Louis MacNeice

    "Fondling only to throttle the nuzzling moment
    Smuggled under the table, hungry or not
    We roughride over the sleepers, finger the menu,
    Avoid our neighbour's eyes and wonder what"


    Watching waiters doing their staggering ballet down the aisles of restaurant cars with plates of roast beef and gravy jugs is a rare pleasure. As first class passengers stare meaningfully into their laptops, we steerage 'customers' queue for our red-hot microwaved sausages in flaccid buns.*


    On the Departure Platform
    by Thomas Hardy

    We kissed at the barrier; and passing through
    She left me, and moment by moment got
    Smaller and smaller, until to my view
    She was but a spot;

    A wee white spot of muslin fluff
    That down the diminishing platform bore
    Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough
    To the carriage door.

    Under the lamplight’s fitful glowers,
    Behind dark groups from far and near,
    Whose interests were apart from ours,
    She would disappear,

    Then show again, till I ceased to see
    That flexible form, that nebulous white;
    And she who was more than my life to me
    Had vanished quite.

    We have penned new plans since that fair fond day,
    And in season she will appear again—
    Perhaps in the same soft white array—
    But never as then!

    —‘And why, young man, must eternally fly
    A joy you’ll repeat, if you love her well?’
    —O friend, nought happens twice thus; why,
    I cannot tell!



    The Send-Off
    by Wilfred Owen

    Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
    To the siding-shed,
    And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
    Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
    As men's are, dead.
    Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
    Stood staring hard,
    Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
    Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
    Winked to the guard.
    So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
    They were not ours:
    We never heard to which front these were sent.
    Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
    Who gave them flowers.
    Shall they return to beatings of great bells
    In wild trainloads?
    A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
    May creep back, silent, to still village wells
    Up half-known roads.

    Some railways journeys were both sickening and mind-numbingly frightening in equal measure. One thinks of those trains of death approaching the watchtower gateway at Auschwitz. Here Owen, possibly the greatest first world war poet, drives home the experience of the ordinary soldier travelling to incomprehensible horror.*



    The Tourist's Alphabet
    by Mr Punch's Railway Book

    A is the affable guard whom you square:
    B is the Bradshaw which leads you to swear:
    C is the corner you fight to obtain:
    D is the draught of which others complain"


    The sadly lamented Punch magazine was always fertile ground for railway ribaldry. This ABC is rich in comedy with its juxtapositions of details like kettles and lemon drops with train crashes.*



    Changing at York
    by Tony Harrison

    "A directory that runs from B to V,
    the Yellow Pages' entries for HOTELS
    and TAXIS torn out, the smell of dossers' pee,
    saliva in the mouthpiece, whisky smells - "


    Oh we've all been here. The guilty phone call from a freezing phone box at a station. I once fell asleep on a train and had to get off at a place called Sole Street, and nearly died of cold when nobody came to pick me up. Serve me right, she said.*



    By Philip Larkin 1922–1985

    That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
    Not till about
    One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
    Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
    All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
    Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
    Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
    Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
    The river’s level drifting breadth began,
    Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

    All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
    For miles inland,
    A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
    Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
    Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
    A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
    And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
    Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
    Until the next town, new and nondescript,
    Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

    At first, I didn’t notice what a noise
    The weddings made
    Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
    The interest of what’s happening in the shade,
    And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
    I took for porters larking with the mails,
    And went on reading. Once we started, though,
    We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
    In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
    All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

    As if out on the end of an event
    Waving goodbye
    To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
    More promptly out next time, more curiously,
    And saw it all again in different terms:
    The fathers with broad belts under their suits
    And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
    An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
    The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
    The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

    Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
    Yes, from cafés
    And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
    Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
    Were coming to an end. All down the line
    Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
    The last confetti and advice were thrown,
    And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
    Just what it saw departing: children frowned
    At something dull; fathers had never known

    Success so huge and wholly farcical;
    The women shared
    The secret like a happy funeral;
    While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
    At a religious wounding. Free at last,
    And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
    We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
    Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
    Long shadows over major roads, and for
    Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

    Just long enough to settle hats and say
    I nearly died,

    A dozen marriages got under way.
    They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
    —An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
    And someone running up to bowl—and none
    Thought of the others they would never meet
    Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
    I thought of London spread out in the sun,
    Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

    There we were aimed. And as we raced across
    Bright knots of rail
    Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
    Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
    Travelling coincidence; and what it held
    Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
    That being changed can give. We slowed again,
    And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
    A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
    Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.


    Philip Larkin, “The Whitsun Weddings” from Collected Poems.
    Used by permission of The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Phillip Larkin.

    Source: Collected Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001)



    Sunday, December 25, 2011

    John Greenleaf Whittier - Snowbound, A Winter Idyl


    Snow-bound, a Winter Idyl
    by John Greenleaf Whittier
     *subtitles added by R.E. Slater 
    Snow-bound

    The sun that brief December day
    Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
    And, darkly circled, gave at noon
    A sadder light than waning moon.
    Slow tracing down the thickening sky
    Its 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 race
    Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
    The coming of the snow-storm told.
    The wind blew east; we heard the roar
    Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
    And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
    Beat 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 mows
    Raked 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 rows
    The cattle shake their walnut bows;
    While, peering from his early perch
    Upon the scaffold's pole of birch,
    The cock his crested helmet bent
    And down his querulous challenge sent.




    The World Transformed

    Unwarmed by any sunset light
    The gray day darkened into night,
    A night made hoary with the swarm
    And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
    As zigzag, wavering to and fro,
    Crossed and recrossed the wingëd snow:
    And ere the early bedtime came
    The white drift piled the window-frame,
    And through the glass the clothes-line posts
    Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

    So all night long the storm roared on:
    The morning broke without a sun;
    In tiny spherule traced with lines
    Of Nature's geometric signs,
    In starry flake, and pellicle,
    All day the hoary meteor fell;
    And, when the second morning shone,
    We looked upon a world unknown,
    On nothing we could call our own.
    Around the glistening wonder bent
    The blue wall of the firmament,
    No cloud above, no earth below, -
    A universe of sky and snow!
    The old familiar sights of ours
    Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
    Rose 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 sat
    With 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 tell
    Of Pisa's leaning miracle.




    Father

    A prompt, decisive man, no breath 
    Our father wasted: "Boys, a path!"
    Well pleased (for when did farmer boy
    Count 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, made
    A tunnel walled and overlaid
    With dazzling crystal: we had read
    Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave,
    And to our own his name we gave,
    With many a wish the luck were ours
    To 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 bore
    The loosening drift its breath before;
    Low circling round its southern zone,
    The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.
    No church-bell lent its Christian tone
    To the savage air, no social smoke
    Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
    A solitude made more intense
    By dreary-voicëd elements,
    The shrieking of the mindless wind,
    The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
    And on the glass the unmeaning beat
    Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
    Beyond the circle of our hearth
    No welcome sound of toil or mirth
    Unbound the spell, and testified
    Of human life and thought outside.
    We minded that the sharpest ear
    The buried brooklet could not hear,
    The music of whose liquid lip
    Had been to us companionship,
    And, in our lonely life, had grown
    To have an almost human tone.

    As night drew on, and, from the crest
    Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
    The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
    From sight beneath the smothering bank,
    We piled, with care, our nightly stack
    Of 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 art
    The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
    We watched the first red blaze appear,
    Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
    On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
    Until the old, rude-furnished room
    Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
    While radiant with a mimic flame
    Outside the sparkling drift became,
    And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
    Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
    The crane and pendent trammels showed,
    The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed;
    While childish fancy, prompt to tell
    The 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 wood
    Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
    Transfigured in the silver flood,
    Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
    Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
    Took shadow, or the sombre green
    Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
    Against the whiteness at their back.
    For such a world and such a night
    Most fitting that unwarming light,
    Which only seemd where'er it fell
    To make the coldness visible.




    Firelight

    Shut in from all the world without, 
    We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
    Content to let the north-wind roar
    In baffled rage at pane and door,
    While the red logs before us beat
    The frost-line back with tropic heat;
    And ever, when a louder blast
    Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
    The merrier up its roaring draught
    The great throat of the chimney laughed;
    The house-dog on his paws outspread
    Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
    The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
    A 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 stood
    With 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 snow
    Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.
    O Time and Change! -- with hair as gray
    As 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 thou
    Are left of all that circle now, --
    The dear home faces whereupon
    That 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 bees
    And 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 sees
    The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
    Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
    Nor looks to see the breaking day
    Across 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 land
    Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand,
    As if a far-blown trumpet stirred
    The 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 ride
    On Memphremagog's wooded side;
    Sat down again to moose and samp
    In trapper's hut and Indian camp;
    Lived o'er the old idyllic ease
    Beneath St. François' hemlock-trees;
    Again for him the moonlight shone
    On Norman cap and bodiced zone;
    Again he heard the violin play
    Which led the village dance away,
    And mingled in its merry whirl
    The grandam and the laughing girl.
    Or, nearer home, our steps he led
    Where Salisbury's level marshes spread
        Mile-wide as flied the laden bee;
    Where merry mowers, hale and strong,
    Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along
        The low green prairies of the sea.
    We shared the fishing off Boar's Head,
        And round the rocky Isles of Shoals
        The 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 told
    To sleepy listeners as they lay
    Stretched idly on the salted hay,
    Adrift along the winding shores,
    When favoring breezes deigned to blow
    The square sail of the gundelow
    And idle lay the useless oars.




    Mother

    Our mother, while she turned her wheel
    Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
    Told how the Indian hordes came down
    At midnight on Concheco town,
    And how her own great-uncle bore
    His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
    Recalling, in her fitting phrase,
        So rich and picturesque and free
        (The common unrhymed poetry
    Of 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 look
    At the gray wizard's conjuring-book,
    The fame whereof went far and wide
    Through 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, knew
    What flowers in wood and meadow grew,
    What sunny hillsides autumn-brown
    She 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 loud
    Beneath the gray November cloud.
    Then, haply, with a look more grave,
    And soberer tone, some tale she gave
    From 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 pursued
    His portly presence, mad for food,
    With dark hints muttered under breath
    Of casting lots for life or death,
    Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,
    To be himself the sacrifice.
    Then, suddenly, as if to save
    The 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 sent
    By Him who gave the tangled ram
    To spare the child of Abraham."

    Uncle

    Our uncle, innocent of books,
    Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
    The ancient teachers never dumb
    Of 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 keys
    To all the woodcraft mysteries;
    Himself to Nature's heart so near
    That all her voices in his ear
    Of beast or bird had meanings clear,
    Like Apollonius of old,
    Who knew the tales the sparrows told,
    Or Hermes, who interpreted
    What 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 sounds
    Whose girdle was the parish bounds,
    Whereof his fondly partial pride
    The common features magnified,
    As Surrey hills to mountains grew
    In 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 mink
    Went 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 overhead
        The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.

    Aunt

    Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer
    And voice in dreams I see and hear, --
    The sweetest woman ever Fate
    Perverse denied a household mate,
    Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
    Found peace in love's unselfishness,
    And welcome wheresoe'er she went,
    A calm and gracious element,
    Whose presence seemed the sweet income
    And 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 details
    And homespuun warp of circumstance
    A golden woof-thread of romance.
    For well she kept her genial mood
    And simple faith of maidenhood;
    Before her still a cloud-land lay,
    The mirage loomed across her way;
    The morning dew, that dries so soon
    With others, glistened at her noon;
    Through years of toil and soil and care,
    From glossy tress to thin gray hair,
    All unprofaned she held apart
    The virgin fancies of the heart.
    Be shame to him of woman born
    Who hath for such but thought of scorn.

    Sister

    There, too, our elder sister plied
    Her 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 disguise
    The secret of self-sacrifice.
    O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best
    That Heaven itself coud give thee, -- rest,
    Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!
    How many a poor one's blessing went
    With thee beneath the low green tent
    Whose curtain never outward swings!

    As one who held herself a part
    Of all she saw, and let her heart
        Against the household bosom lean,
    Upon the motley-braided mat
    Our yougest and our dearest sat,
    Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
        Now bathed in the unfading green
    And 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 snow
        For months upon her grave has lain;
    And now, when summer south-winds blow
        And brier and harebell bloom again,
    I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
    I see the violet-sprinkled sod
    Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
    The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
    Yet following me where'er I went
    With dark eyes full of love's content.
    The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
    The air with sweetness; all the hills
    Stretch 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 gold
    Thy 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 soon
        Shall 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?

    The School Master

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

    A careless boy that night he seemed;
        But at his desk he had the look
    And air of one who wisely schemed,
        And hostage from the future took
        In trained thought and lore of book.
    Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he
    Shall 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 advance
    The darkness and the ignorance,
    The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,
    Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth,
    Made murder pastime, and the hell
    Of prison-torture possible;
    The cruel lie of caste refute,
    Old forms remould, and substitute
    For 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 thence
    The quick wires of intelligence;
    Till North and South together brought
    Shall own the same electric thought,
    In peace a common flag salute,
    And, side by side in labor's free
    And unresentful revalry,
    Harvest the fields wherein they fought.




    The Prophetess

    Another guest that winter night
    Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.
    Unmarked by time, and yet not young,
    The honeyed music of her tongue
    And words of meekness scarcely told
    A nature passionate and bold,
    Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,
    Its milder features dwarded beside
    Her unbent will's majestic pride.
    She sat among us, at the test,
    A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,
    Rebuking with her cultured phrase
    Our homeliness of words and ways.
    A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
    Swayed 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 face
    Presaging ill to him whom Fate
    Condemned to share her love or hate.
    A woman tropical, intense
    In thought and act, in soul and sense,
    She blended in a like degree
    The vixen and the devotee,
    Revealing with each freak of feint
    The temper of Petruchio's Kate,
    The raptures of Siena's saint.
    Her tapering hand and rounded wrist
    Had facile power to form a fist;
    The warm, dark languish of her eyes
    Was never safe from wrath's surprise.
    Brows saintly calm and lips devout
    Knew every change of scowl and pout;
    And the sweet voice had notes more high
    And shrill for social battle-cry.

    Since then what old cathedral town
    Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown,
    What convent-gate has held its lock
    Against the challenge of her knock!
    Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares,
    Up sea-set Malta's rocky stair,
    Gray olive slopes of hills that hem
        Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,
    Or startling on her desert throne
    The crazy Queen of Lebanon
    With 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 discern
        What threads the fatal sisters spun,
        Through what ancestral years has run
    The 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 blood
        A life-long discord and annoy,
        Water of tears with oil of joy,
    And hid within the folded bud
        Peversities of flower and fruit.
    It is not ours to separate
        The tangled skien of will and fate,
    To show what metes and bounds should stand
    Upon the soul's debatable land,
    And between choice and Providence
    Divide the circle of events;
    But He who knows our frame is just,
    Merciful and compassionate,
    And full of sweet assurances
    And hope for all the language is,
    That He remembereth we are dust!




    Last Firelights

    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 sign
    Its 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 gray
    And laid it tenderly away;
    Then roused himself to safely cover
    The dull red brands with ashes over,
    And while, with care, our mother laid
    The work aside, her steps she stayed
    One moment, seeking to express
    Her grateful sense of happiness
    For 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.

    A'bed

    Within our beds awhile we heard
    The 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 do
    When hearts are light and life is new;
    Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
    Till in the summer-land of dreams
    They softened to the sound of streams,
    Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
    And lapsing waves on quiet shores.




    Morning

    Next morn we wakened with the shout
    Of merry voices high and clear;
    And saw the teamsters drawing near
    To break the drifted highways out.
    Down the long hillside treading slow
    We saw the half-buried oxen go,
    Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
    Their straining nostrils white with frost.
    Before our door the stragglins train
    Drew up, an added team to gain.
    The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
        Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes
        From lip to lip; the younger folks
    Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling rolled,
    Then toiled again the cavalcade
        O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine,
        And woodland paths that wound between
    Low 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 saw
    Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
    And curious eyes of merry girls,
    Lifting their hands in mock defence
    Against the snow-ball's compliments,
    And reading in each missive tost
    The charm with Eden never lost.




    The Doctor

    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 way
    Of one who, prompt at Duty's call
    Was free to urge her claim on all,
        That some poor neighbor sick abed
    At night our mother's aid would need.
    For, one in generous thought and deed
        What mattered in the sufferer's sight
        The Quaker matron's inward light,
    The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed?
    All hearts confess the saints elect
        Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
    And melt not in an acid sect
        The Christian pearl of charity!




    A Week Later

    So days went on: a week had passed
    Since the great world was heard from last.
    The Almanac we studied o'er,
    Read and reread our little store
    Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score;
    One harmless novel, mostly hid
    From 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 bore
    The village paper to our door.
    Lo! broadening outward as we read,
    To warmer zones the horizon spread;
    In panoramic length unrolled
    We saw the marvels that it told.
    Before us passed the painted Creeks,
        And daft McGregor on his raids
        In Costa Rica's everglades.
    And up Taygetos winding slow
    Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks,
    A Turk's head at each saddle-bow!
    Welcome to us its week-old news,
    Its corner for the rustic Muse
        Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
    Its record, mingling in a breath
    The 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 snow
    Was melted in the genial glow;
    Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
    And all the world was ours once more!




    Echoes of the Past

    Clasp, Angel of the backword look
        And folded wings of ashen gray
        And 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 glow
    The 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 trees
    Shade off to mournful cypresses,
        With the white amaranths underneath.
    Even while I look, I can but heed
        The restless sands' incessant fall,
    Importunate hours that hours succeed
    Each 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 bids
    The dreamer leave his dream midway
    For 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 ways
    Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
    And dear and early friends -- the few
    Who yet remain -- shall pause to view
        These Flemish pictures of old days;
    Sit with me by the homestead hearth
    And stretch the hands of memory forth
        To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze!
    And thanks untraced to lips unknown
    Shall greet me like the odors blown
    From unseen meadows newly mown,
    Or lilies floating in some pond,
    Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;
    The traveller owns the grateful sense
    Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
    And, pausing takes with forehead bare
    The benediction of the air.


    - John Greenleaf Whittier
    *subtitles added by R.E. Slater


    * * * * * * * * * * * *


    Overview, Composition, and Analysis
    http://www.ask.com/wiki/Snow-Bound?o=2801&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com



    Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl is a long narrative poem by American poet John Greenleaf Whittierfirst published in 1866.

    The poem takes place in what is today known as the John Greenleaf Whittier Homestead, which still stands in Haverhill, Massachusetts.[1] The poem chronicles a rural New England family as a snowstorm rages outside for three days. Stuck in their home for a week, the family members exchange stories by their roaring fire.

    Overview

    Composition and publication history

    John Greenleaf Whittier, author ofSnow-Bound, pictured in 1859
    Whittier began the poem originally as a personal gift to his niece Elizabeth as a method of remembering the family.[2] Nevertheless, he told publisher James Thomas Fields about it, referring to it as "a homely picture of old New England homes".[2] Snow-Bound was first published as a book-length poem on February 17, 1866.[3]

    Response

    The home where Snow-Bound takes place is today preserved and open to the public as the John Greenleaf Whittier Homestead.
    Snow-Bound was financially successful, much to Whittier's surprise.[4] By the summer after its first publication, sales had reached 20,000, earning Whittier royalties of ten cents per copy. He ultimately collected $10,000 for it.[5] Its popularity also led to the home depicted in the poem being preserved as a museum in 1892.[6]

    The first important critical response to Snow-Bound came from James Russell Lowell. Published in the North American Review, the review emphasized the poem as a record of a vanishing era. "It describes scenes and manners which the rapid changes of our national habits will soon have made as remote from us as if they were foreign or ancient," he wrote. "Already are the railroads displacing the companionable cheer of crackling walnut with the dogged self-complacency and sullen virtue of anthracite."[7] The poem was second in popularity only to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha and was published well into the twentieth century. Though it remains in many common anthologies today, it is not as widely read as it once was.[6]

    Analysis

    The poem attempts to make the ideal past retrievable.[8] By the time it was published, homes like the Whittier family homestead were examples of the fading rural past of the United States.[6] The use of storytelling by the fireplace was a metaphor against modernity in a post-Civil War United States, without acknowledging any of the specific forces modernizing the country.[9] The raging snowstorm also suggests impending death, which is combated against through the family's nostalgic memories.[10] Scholar Angela Sorby suggests the poem focuses on whiteness and its definition, ultimately signaling a vision of a biracial America after the Civil War.[11]



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    Biography of John Greenleaf Whittier


    An American poet and editor, John Greenleaf Whittier was born December 17, 1807, in Haverhill, Massachusetts. The son of two devout Quakers, he grew up on the family farm and had little formal schooling. His first published poem, "The Exile's Departure," was published in William Lloyd Garrison's Newburyport Free Press in 1826. He then attended Haverhill Academy from 1827 to 1828, supporting himself as a shoemaker and schoolteacher. By the time he was twenty, he had published enough verse to bring him to the attention of editors and readers in the antislavery cause. A Quaker devoted to social causes and reform, Whittier worked passionately for a series of abolitionist newspapers and magazines. In Boston, he edited American Manufacturer and Essex Gazette before becoming editor of the important New England Weekly Review. Whittier was active in his support of National Republican candidates; he was a delegate in 1831 to the national Republican Convention in support of Henry Clay, and he himself ran unsuccessfully for Congress the following year.

    His first book, Legends of New England in Prose and Verse, was published in 1831; from then until the Civil War, he wrote essays and articles as well as poems, almost all of which were concerned with abolition. In 1833 he wrote Justice and Expedience urging immediate abolition. In 1834 he was elected as a Whig for one term to the Massachusetts legislature; mobbed and stoned in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1835. He moved in 1836 to Amesbury, Massachusetts, where he worked for the American Anti-Slavery Society. During his tenure as editor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, in May 1838, the paper's offices burned to the ground and were sacked during the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall by a mob.

    Whittier founded the antislavery Liberty party in 1840 and ran for Congress in 1842. In the mid-1850s he began to work for the formation of the Republican party; he supported presidential candidacy of John C. Frémont in 1856. He helped to found Atlantic Monthly in 1857. Although Whittier was close friends with Elizabeth Lloyd Howell and considered marrying her, in 1859 he decided against it.

    While Whittier's critics never considered him to be a great poet, they thought him a nobel and kind man whose verse gave unique expression to ideas they valued. The Civil War inspired the famous poem, "Barbara Frietchie," but the important change in his work came after the war. From 1865 until his death in 1892, Whittier wrote of religion, nature, and rural life; he became the most popular Fireside poets.

    In 1866 he published his most popular work, Snow-Bound, which sold 20,000 copies. In the early 1880s, he formed close friendships with Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Fields. For his seventieth birthday dinner in 1877, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mark Twain, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and William Dean Howells attended. He died at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, on September 7, 1892.


    A Selected Bibliography

    Poetry

    Legends of New England in Prose and Verse (1831)

    Moll Pitcher (1832)

    Justice and Expediency (1833)

    Poems (1838)

    Lays of My Home (1843)
    The Panorama (1846)
    Voices of Freedom (1846)
    Poems by John G. Whittier (1849)
    Songs of Labor (1850)
    The Chapel of the Hermits (1853)
    Poetical Works (1857)
    Home Ballads (1860)
    In War Time (1864)
    Snow-Bound (1866)
    The Tent on the Beach (1867)
    Among the Hills (1869)
    Miriam and Other Poems (1871)
    Hazel-Blossoms (1875)
    The Vision of Echard (1878)
    St. Gregory's Guest (1886)
    At Sundown (1890)
    The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1894)

    Prose

    Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal (1849)
    Old Portraits and Modern Sketches (1850)
    Literary Recreations and Miscellanies (1854)