=Discussion.= 1. Picture the scene described in the first five lines. 2. Compare with the picture given you in the first stanza of “Snow-Flakes,” page 80. 3. Read in a way to bring out the contrast between the wild storm and the scene within the “farmhouse at the garden’s end.” 4. What is meant by “fierce artificer”? 5. What is the “tile” with which the poet imagines the “unseen quarry” is furnished? 6. Of what are the “white bastions” made? 7. Does the use of the word “windward” add to the picture and does such detail add to the beauty of the poem or detract from it? 8. Who is described as “myriad-handed”? 9. What is the mockery in hanging “Parian wreaths” on a coop or kennel? 10. What picture do lines 20, 21, and 22 give you? 11. What does the “mad wind’s night-work” do for Art? =Phrases= courier’s feet delayed, 78, 6 radiant fireplace, 78, 8 tumultuous privacy, 78, 9 north wind’s masonry, 78, 10 myriad-handed, 78, 15 Parian wreaths, 78, 18 tapering turret, 78, 22 hours are numbered, 78, 23 slow structures, 79, 2 frolic architecture, 79, 4 SNOWFLAKES HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken Over the woodlands brown and bare, Over the harvest-fields forsaken, Silent, and soft, and slow, Descends the snow. Even as our cloudy fancies take Suddenly shape in some divine expression, Even as the troubled heart doth make In the white countenance confession, The troubled sky reveals The grief it feels. This is the poem of the air, Slowly in silent syllables recorded; This is the secret of despair, Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded, Now whispered and revealed To wood and field. NOTES AND QUESTIONS =Biography.= Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was born in Portland, Maine. In “The Courtship of Miles Standish” he has made us acquainted with his ancestors, John Alden and Priscilla Mullens, passengers on the _Mayflower_.