- 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 hill 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 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 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, nought cares he
- For number or proportion. Mockingly,
- On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
- A swan-like form invests the hiddden thorn;
- Fills up the famer’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.
