Snowy Time

Pieter Bruegel, The Hunters in the Snow - Kunsthistorisches Museum - Vienna

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 steed and traveller 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,

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.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Snow-Storm”

Just a quick Hello to everyone! I’m sure you’ll enjoy the above beautiful poem.

P.S. Light blogging until January 10, 2012