We have plenty of idyls of autumn color, like Buchanan Read's "Closing Scene," and portions of Longfellow's "Hiawatha." But American winter landscapes are as poetical as those of autumn.[27] It is probable that the scarcity of snow-idyls hitherto is due to the supposed cheerlessness of the snow. But with the rapid multiplication of winter comforts, our nature-worship is cautiously broadening so as to include even the stern beauty of winter. There are already a good many signs of this in literature. We have had, of late, lovely little snow-and-winter vignettes in prose by John Burroughs of New York, and Edith Thomas of Ohio; and there is plenty of room for further study of winter in other regions of the United States. The most delicate bit of realistic winter poetry in literature is Emerson's "Snow-Storm." Mr. Whittier is an ardent admirer of that writer--as what poet is not?--and his own productions show frequent traces of Emersonianisms. He has prefixed to "Snow-Bound" a quotation from the "Snow-Storm," and there can scarcely be a doubt that to the countless obligations we all owe Emerson must be added this: that he inspired the writing of Whittier's finest poem, and the best idyl of American rural life. It is too complex and diffusive fully to equal in artistic purity and plastic proportion the "Cotter's Saturday Night" of Burns; but it is much richer than that poem in felicitous single epithets, which, like little wicket doors, open up to the eye of memory many a long-forgotten picture of early life. [Footnote 27: What is the subtle fascination that lurks in such bits of winter poetry as the following, collected by the writer out of his reading? "Yesterday the sullen year Saw the snowy whirlwind fly."--_Gray._ "All winter drives along the darkened air."--_Thomson._ "High-ridged the whirled drift has almost reached The powdered keystone of the churchyard porch; Mute hangs the hooded bell; the tombs lie buried."--_Grahame._ "Alas! alas! thou snow-smitten wood of Troy, and mountains of Ida."--_Sophocles._ "O hard, dull bitterness of cold."--_Whittier._ "And in the narrow house o' death Let winter round me rave."--_Burns._ "The mesmerizer, Snow, With his hand's first sweep Put the earth to sleep."--_Robert Browning._ "And the caked snow is shuffled From the plough-boy's heavy shoon."--_Keats._] "Snow-Bound" was published in 1860, and was written, Mr. Whittier has said, "to beguile the weariness of a sick-chamber." The poet has obeyed the canon of Lessing, and instead of giving us dead description wholly, has shown us his characters in action, and extended his story over three days and the two intervening nights,--that is to say, the main action covers that time: the whole time mentioned in the poem is a week. It is unnecessary to give here any further account of the idyl than has already been furnished in the account of Whittier's boyhood.