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 farm-house at the garden’s end. The sled and traveler stopp’d, the courier’s feet Delay’d, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fire-place, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. Come see the north-wind’s masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore Furnish’d 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 hidden thorn; Fills up the farmer’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 number’d, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, Leaves, when the sun appears, astonish’d 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. * * * * * THE PROBLEM. I LIKE a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles, Yet not for all his faith can see Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure? Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature roll’d The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano’s tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below,―― The canticles of love and wo. The hand that rounded Peter’s dome, And groin’d the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity. Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew, The conscious stone to beauty grew. Know’st thou what wove yon wood-bird’s nest Of leaves, and feathers from her breast; Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, Painting with morn each annual cell; Or how the sacred pine tree adds To her old leaves new myriads? Such and so grew these holy piles, Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As the best gem upon her zone; And morning opes with haste her lids To gaze upon the Pyramids; O’er England’s Abbeys bends the sky As on its friends with kindred eye; For, out of Thought’s interior sphere These wonders rose to upper air, And nature gladly gave them place,