blasted fields, 76, 2 luckless forms, 77, 1 sunless cold, 77, 2 fearful breath, 77, 4 unscorched wing, 77, 5 ancient ice, 77, 6 torpid touch, 77, 8 glazing breath, 77, 8 THE SNOW STORM RALPH WALDO EMERSON 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 steed 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, naught 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, Mauger 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. NOTES AND QUESTIONS =Biography.= Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was a native of Boston, born not far from Franklin’s birthplace. He was the oldest among that brilliant group of New England scholars and writers that developed under the influence of Harvard College. Emerson was a quiet boy, but that he had high ambitions and sturdy determination is shown by the fact that he worked his own way through college. He is best known for his essays, full of noble ideas and wise philosophy, but he also wrote poetry. As a poet he was careless of his meter, making his lines often purposely rugged, but they are always charged and bristling with thoughts that shock and thrill like electric batteries. In 1836 he wrote the “Concord Hymn” containing the famous lines: “Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world!” His poems of nature are clear-cut and vivid as snapshots. “The Humble Bee,” as a critic puts it, “seems almost to shine with the heat and light of summer.”