BIRDS AND NATURE. 



ILLUSTRATED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY. 



Vol. XV. JANUARY. 1904 No. i 



f — 



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 farmhouse at the garden's end. 

 The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet 

 Delayed, all friends shut out, the house inmates sit 

 Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed 

 In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 

 Come see the north wind's masonry: 

 Out of an unseen quarry, evermore 

 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; naught cares he 

 For number or proportion. Mockingly, 

 On coop or kennel, he hangs Parian wreaths ; 

 A swanlike form invests the hidden thorn, 

 Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, 

 Mauger the farmer's sighs ; and at the gate 

 A tapering turret overtops the work. 

 And when his hours are numbered, and the work 

 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. 



— Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



