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Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl
A 750-line idyllic poem about a snow-storm from the narrator's childhood.(Summary by Paul Tremblay)
1 pages, Audiobook
First published January 1, 1866
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About the author
John Greenleaf Whittier
1,131 books102 followersJohn Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He is usually listed as one of the Fireside Poets. Whittier was strongly influenced by the Scottish poet, Robert Burns.
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January 18, 2025
Snowed-in for three days, in the midst of a New England blizzard? Actually, it does not sound too bad in this 1866 poem by poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Written originally as a sort of family gift, to help members of the Whittier family remember loved ones who had passed away, Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl offers a fine and evocative look at how the cycle of the seasons can prompt reflection regarding the cycles of human life.
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-92) is one of those American poets who might have been more familiar to readers of an earlier time than to those of today. A New England Quaker, he sometimes wrote of the religious persecution that his ancestors once faced from the region’s Puritan majority. He took up the abolitionist cause in 1833, at a time when advocating for an end to slavery was neither popular nor safe, in either North or South.
His commitment to abolitionism and his dedication to his poetic craft often came together; and he made enough of a name for himself as a poet that the U.S. Postal Service issued a 2-cent postage stamp in his honor in 1940. Nowadays, his work may be of interest mainly to scholars and students of New England’s literary history; but the best of his poetry had a gentle musicality to it, as one can see in Snow-Bound.
The early part of the poem emphasizes the strange beauty of the winter storm that traps the family in their home:
Unwarmed by any sunset light
The grey day darkened into night…
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
The storm alters the look of all things around them, until “even the long sweep, high aloof,/In its slant splendour, seemed to tell/Of Pisa’s leaning miracle.” It sounds rather grim when the family finds itself confronting
A solitude made more intense
By dreary voiced elements,
The skrieking of the mindless wind,
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
Quickly, however, it becomes clear that this New England family is well-prepared for winter’s wrath:
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons’ straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.
The poem’s original purpose – to recall to the minds of the living the memory of family members who have gone before – becomes clear late in the poem, when the speaker of the poem reveals that, of all the family members who were gathered together around that wintertime fireside, only the speaker and his brother are still alive:
O Time and Change! – with hair as grey
As was my sire’s that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to live still on!...
Those lighted faces smile no more,
We tread the paths their feet have worn….
It makes sense that the then-59-year-old Whittier might have been engaging in reflections on human mortality at this point in this life. But the speaker of Snow-Bound tries to turn his own reflections toward faith in divine justice and hope for an after-life reunion with those beloved family members who have gone before:
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must….
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!
Remembering a beloved sister who passed away a few months before, so that “The chill weight of the winter snow/For months upon her grave has lain”, the speaker again expresses his hope for some sort of reunion after death:
And while in life’s late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at hand the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?
Some parts of the poem show a Transcendentalist faith in the superiority of intuitive, observation-based knowledge over rationalist “book-learning”:
Our uncle, innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature’s unhoused Lyceum.
Here, one might detect echoes of Emerson in Nature, or Thoreau in Walden, looking to ordinary people, people untainted by the groupthink of church or town hall or political party, for experience-based wisdom that can help move humankind forward.
Eventually, the family’s winter exile ends, with the digging-out of the snow-choked highways:
Next morn we wakened with the shout
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out….
The speaker celebrates the family’s return to the larger world of community, while savouring the opportunity that the family’s “winter idyll” has provided for stepping back from everyday life and engaging in thoughtful reflection.
Overall, Snow-Bound is an evocative winter poem, and the woodcut illustrations that accompany the original published version of the poem capture the nostalgic quality that the poem seeks to evoke. It makes fine reading for a winter day, particularly if the snow is falling outside your home fast enough that you and your family are settling in for a comfortable night by the fireside.
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-92) is one of those American poets who might have been more familiar to readers of an earlier time than to those of today. A New England Quaker, he sometimes wrote of the religious persecution that his ancestors once faced from the region’s Puritan majority. He took up the abolitionist cause in 1833, at a time when advocating for an end to slavery was neither popular nor safe, in either North or South.
His commitment to abolitionism and his dedication to his poetic craft often came together; and he made enough of a name for himself as a poet that the U.S. Postal Service issued a 2-cent postage stamp in his honor in 1940. Nowadays, his work may be of interest mainly to scholars and students of New England’s literary history; but the best of his poetry had a gentle musicality to it, as one can see in Snow-Bound.
The early part of the poem emphasizes the strange beauty of the winter storm that traps the family in their home:
Unwarmed by any sunset light
The grey day darkened into night…
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
The storm alters the look of all things around them, until “even the long sweep, high aloof,/In its slant splendour, seemed to tell/Of Pisa’s leaning miracle.” It sounds rather grim when the family finds itself confronting
A solitude made more intense
By dreary voiced elements,
The skrieking of the mindless wind,
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
Quickly, however, it becomes clear that this New England family is well-prepared for winter’s wrath:
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons’ straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.
The poem’s original purpose – to recall to the minds of the living the memory of family members who have gone before – becomes clear late in the poem, when the speaker of the poem reveals that, of all the family members who were gathered together around that wintertime fireside, only the speaker and his brother are still alive:
O Time and Change! – with hair as grey
As was my sire’s that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to live still on!...
Those lighted faces smile no more,
We tread the paths their feet have worn….
It makes sense that the then-59-year-old Whittier might have been engaging in reflections on human mortality at this point in this life. But the speaker of Snow-Bound tries to turn his own reflections toward faith in divine justice and hope for an after-life reunion with those beloved family members who have gone before:
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must….
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!
Remembering a beloved sister who passed away a few months before, so that “The chill weight of the winter snow/For months upon her grave has lain”, the speaker again expresses his hope for some sort of reunion after death:
And while in life’s late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at hand the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?
Some parts of the poem show a Transcendentalist faith in the superiority of intuitive, observation-based knowledge over rationalist “book-learning”:
Our uncle, innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature’s unhoused Lyceum.
Here, one might detect echoes of Emerson in Nature, or Thoreau in Walden, looking to ordinary people, people untainted by the groupthink of church or town hall or political party, for experience-based wisdom that can help move humankind forward.
Eventually, the family’s winter exile ends, with the digging-out of the snow-choked highways:
Next morn we wakened with the shout
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out….
The speaker celebrates the family’s return to the larger world of community, while savouring the opportunity that the family’s “winter idyll” has provided for stepping back from everyday life and engaging in thoughtful reflection.
Overall, Snow-Bound is an evocative winter poem, and the woodcut illustrations that accompany the original published version of the poem capture the nostalgic quality that the poem seeks to evoke. It makes fine reading for a winter day, particularly if the snow is falling outside your home fast enough that you and your family are settling in for a comfortable night by the fireside.
August 8, 2016
2015: I read this almost every year, on the wintriest day. Miss you, Dad.
2009: My dad's favorite poem--and a perfect day to reread it!
2009: My dad's favorite poem--and a perfect day to reread it!
January 2, 2020
3.5 stars.
Beautifully atmospheric verses about the snow storm, other verses just an eesh trite, but it's definitely full of koselig/hygge!
Beautifully atmospheric verses about the snow storm, other verses just an eesh trite, but it's definitely full of koselig/hygge!
January 24, 2025
(1866) The Hermit of Amesbury looking back on his childhood farm in Haverhill—on these “Flemish pictures of old days.” Written when he was 59, initially just for his family, it became a runaway hit for a nostalgic nation.
Not to sound dramatic but I don’t want to live in a United States that has forgotten Snow-Bound, this American masterpiece of technique and imagination. The only time I’ve heard Whittier’s name mentioned publicly was when his statue was defaced by Black Lives Matter rioters. John Greenleaf Whittier, of all people. The man who had been threatened by actual mobs for his leading role in the abolitionist cause.
Marginalia:
*The part about the racy, zealous, probably bipolar Harriet Livermore is hilarious when seeing her through the eyes of these retiring Quakers. It’s a funny coincidence to read the allusions to her life with Lady Hester Stanhope, having just learned about the latter from Mary Stewart’s Gabriel Hounds.
Livermore later explained her own behavior thus: “It was in September, A.D. 1811, that tired of the vain, thoughtless life I had led, sick of the world, disappointed in all my hopes of sublunary bliss, I drew up a resolution in my mind to commence a religious life-to become a religious person... Neither fears of hell, nor desires for Heaven influenced the motion. I fled to the name and form of religion, as a present sanctuary from the sorrows of life.”
It was interesting to compare this with the compassionate thoughts of the perceptive poet:
“Where’er her troubled path may be,
The Lord’s sweet pity with her go!
The outward wayward life we see,
The hidden springs we may not know.
Nor is it given us to discern
What threads the fatal sisters spun,
Through what ancestral years has run
The sorrow with the woman born,
What forged her cruel chain of moods,
What set her feet in solitudes…”
*Agrippa Alert! Yet another allusion to him and his work “Magic,” or “Three Books of Occult Philosophy.”
*An editor’s note provided this comforting coda:
"In 1888 Whittier wrote the following lines on the fly-leaf of a copy of the first edition of Snow-Bound:
“Twenty years have taken flight
Since these pages saw the light.
All home loves are gone,
But not all with sadness, still,
Do the eyes of memory fill
As I gaze thereon.
Lone and weary life seemed when
First these pictures of the pen
Grew upon my page;
But I still have loving friends
And the peace our Father sends
Cheers the heart of age."
Not to sound dramatic but I don’t want to live in a United States that has forgotten Snow-Bound, this American masterpiece of technique and imagination. The only time I’ve heard Whittier’s name mentioned publicly was when his statue was defaced by Black Lives Matter rioters. John Greenleaf Whittier, of all people. The man who had been threatened by actual mobs for his leading role in the abolitionist cause.
Marginalia:
*The part about the racy, zealous, probably bipolar Harriet Livermore is hilarious when seeing her through the eyes of these retiring Quakers. It’s a funny coincidence to read the allusions to her life with Lady Hester Stanhope, having just learned about the latter from Mary Stewart’s Gabriel Hounds.
Livermore later explained her own behavior thus: “It was in September, A.D. 1811, that tired of the vain, thoughtless life I had led, sick of the world, disappointed in all my hopes of sublunary bliss, I drew up a resolution in my mind to commence a religious life-to become a religious person... Neither fears of hell, nor desires for Heaven influenced the motion. I fled to the name and form of religion, as a present sanctuary from the sorrows of life.”
It was interesting to compare this with the compassionate thoughts of the perceptive poet:
“Where’er her troubled path may be,
The Lord’s sweet pity with her go!
The outward wayward life we see,
The hidden springs we may not know.
Nor is it given us to discern
What threads the fatal sisters spun,
Through what ancestral years has run
The sorrow with the woman born,
What forged her cruel chain of moods,
What set her feet in solitudes…”
*Agrippa Alert! Yet another allusion to him and his work “Magic,” or “Three Books of Occult Philosophy.”
*An editor’s note provided this comforting coda:
"In 1888 Whittier wrote the following lines on the fly-leaf of a copy of the first edition of Snow-Bound:
“Twenty years have taken flight
Since these pages saw the light.
All home loves are gone,
But not all with sadness, still,
Do the eyes of memory fill
As I gaze thereon.
Lone and weary life seemed when
First these pictures of the pen
Grew upon my page;
But I still have loving friends
And the peace our Father sends
Cheers the heart of age."
December 11, 2016
It's really somewhere between a 3 and a 4. My favorites are Snowbound and Maud Muller as well as the ending of In School-Days. My edition is about pocket, lovely cover and equally lovely illustrations. It was a random happy find.
June 5, 2012
A mature, reflective piece that I was ready and in the right frame of mind for. Worked well for me.
August 19, 2022
A poem about snow
Has struck a new blow -
These fading stars it gets.
A waste of time to read
Dull and tedious screed -
As sun on life now sets.
Has struck a new blow -
These fading stars it gets.
A waste of time to read
Dull and tedious screed -
As sun on life now sets.
Read
December 6, 2025This is some very fun and lovely antiquated Americana. Both the sentiments and scenes are for the most part great. Really I don't have any deep acquaintance with Whittier, but I will probably reread this at some point -- maybe the next time snow is on the ground and I'm mewed up by my four walls again.
April 29, 2023
Long form poem by Whittier; Atmospheric and a good winter read.
May 22, 2015
A mood-setting of an evening when snow-bound in a New England village. The copy I have was printed for the Limited Editions Club in 1930 at the Yale University Press, copy 586 of 1500 numbered and signed copies signed by designed Carl P. Rollins, printer to the University. (I think the initial blue florid capital letters not suited to the poem nor to the book design.)
The book is designed as a folio in size with black spine and bound in (faded) "quarter navy blue moire cloth stamped in silver with delicate marbled paper boards in shades of gray and blue." My copy lacks the original slipcase. My father gave this copy to me ca. 1950 and which I've read perhaps each ten or twenty years since then. I shall give this to Jeff at some future time when it seems timely.
The story evokes a winter in New England, an evening with the presence of family and a few relatives. Such fine imagery! "Unwarmed by any sunset light, the gray day darkened into night, a night made hoary with the swarm, and whirl-dance of the blinding storm." And later:- "What matters how the night behaved? What matter how the north-wind raved? Blow high, blow low, not all its snow could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow."
Family remembrances recur. "Ah, brother! only I and thou are left of all that circle now,- the dear home faces whereupon that fitful firelight paled and shone...." [Whittier the narrator then indulges in a reflection on the past-ness of the scene:] “with so much gone; . . . The voices of that hearth are still.” [His family is largely dead and gone, but] “Life is ever lord of Death,/ And Love can never lose its own! We sped the time with stories old, wrought puzzles out, and riddles told..." And then these sections:-
Our father rode again his ride, on [Lake] Memphremagog's wooded side.
Our mother, while she turned her wheel, or run the new-knit stocking-heel.
Our uncle, innocent of books, was rich in lore of fields and brooks.
Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer and voice in dreams I see and hear.
There, too, our elder sister plied her evening task the stand beside.
Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, the master of the district school....
Another guest[an annoyingly religious woman] that winter night
flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.
At last the great logs, crumbling low, sent out a dull and duller glow....
Next morn we wakened with the shout of merry voices high and clear;
and saw the teamsters drawing near to break the drifted highways out.
So days went on: a week had passed since the great world was heard from last.
Clasp, Angel of the backward look and folded wings of ashen gray and voice of echoes far away;
the brazen covers of thy book; the weird palimpsest old and vest, wherein thou hid'st the
spectral past; where, closely mingling, pale and glow the characters of joy and woe...
And Whittier ends in an elegiac postlude calling for a pause to reflect in the midst of the bustle of a changing world.
The book is designed as a folio in size with black spine and bound in (faded) "quarter navy blue moire cloth stamped in silver with delicate marbled paper boards in shades of gray and blue." My copy lacks the original slipcase. My father gave this copy to me ca. 1950 and which I've read perhaps each ten or twenty years since then. I shall give this to Jeff at some future time when it seems timely.
The story evokes a winter in New England, an evening with the presence of family and a few relatives. Such fine imagery! "Unwarmed by any sunset light, the gray day darkened into night, a night made hoary with the swarm, and whirl-dance of the blinding storm." And later:- "What matters how the night behaved? What matter how the north-wind raved? Blow high, blow low, not all its snow could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow."
Family remembrances recur. "Ah, brother! only I and thou are left of all that circle now,- the dear home faces whereupon that fitful firelight paled and shone...." [Whittier the narrator then indulges in a reflection on the past-ness of the scene:] “with so much gone; . . . The voices of that hearth are still.” [His family is largely dead and gone, but] “Life is ever lord of Death,/ And Love can never lose its own! We sped the time with stories old, wrought puzzles out, and riddles told..." And then these sections:-
Our father rode again his ride, on [Lake] Memphremagog's wooded side.
Our mother, while she turned her wheel, or run the new-knit stocking-heel.
Our uncle, innocent of books, was rich in lore of fields and brooks.
Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer and voice in dreams I see and hear.
There, too, our elder sister plied her evening task the stand beside.
Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, the master of the district school....
Another guest[an annoyingly religious woman] that winter night
flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.
At last the great logs, crumbling low, sent out a dull and duller glow....
Next morn we wakened with the shout of merry voices high and clear;
and saw the teamsters drawing near to break the drifted highways out.
So days went on: a week had passed since the great world was heard from last.
Clasp, Angel of the backward look and folded wings of ashen gray and voice of echoes far away;
the brazen covers of thy book; the weird palimpsest old and vest, wherein thou hid'st the
spectral past; where, closely mingling, pale and glow the characters of joy and woe...
And Whittier ends in an elegiac postlude calling for a pause to reflect in the midst of the bustle of a changing world.
December 18, 2021
As Whittier recounts his memories of a New England snowstorm during his nineteenth century childhood, he hopes the reader will “Sit with me by the homestead hearth,/And stretch the hands of memory forth”. He describes the storm and aftermath, when the family and farm are completely cut off, isolated in a way that may be hard to imagine today:
“Unwarmed by any sunset light/The gray day darkened into night”.
“And, when the second morning shone,/We looked upon a world unknown…/No cloud above, no earth below--/A universe of sky and snow.”
The heart of the story is the scene of his family and their guests gathering on the cold evening by their big fire: “And ever, when a louder blast/Shook beam and rafter as it passed,/The merrier up its roaring draught/The great throat of the chimney laughed.”
They roast nuts and apples, tell jokes and stories, and listen to the adults talk about their experiences: “We shared the fishing off Boar’s Head,/And round the rocky Isles of Shoals/The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;/The chowder on the sand-beach made,/Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,/With spoons of clam-shell from the pot”.
The next day, they wake to the sound of ox teams coming to clear the roads and to ask for their help in this community work, and the doctor stops by next to ask his mother to sit with one of his patients that night. And finally, "the floundering carrier bore/The village paper to our door."
...Wide swung again our ice-locked door,/And all the world was ours once more."
Over the course of the poem, the poet’s thoughts almost take the path of his memories, travelling between the past and the present: “Ah brother! Only I and thou/Are left of all that circle now,--/The dear home faces whereupon/That fitful firelight paled and shone.” Duty calls him back to the present and “importunate hours that hours succeed/Each clamorous with its own sharp need”. Still he hopes readers will “pause to view/These Flemish pictures of old days” and that their enjoyment will somehow flavor his own life in this beautiful image:
“…From unseen meadows newly mown, Or lilies floating in some pond,/Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond./The traveler owns the grateful sense/of sweetness near, he knows not whence,/and, pausing, takes with forehead bare/The benediction of the air”.
“Unwarmed by any sunset light/The gray day darkened into night”.
“And, when the second morning shone,/We looked upon a world unknown…/No cloud above, no earth below--/A universe of sky and snow.”
The heart of the story is the scene of his family and their guests gathering on the cold evening by their big fire: “And ever, when a louder blast/Shook beam and rafter as it passed,/The merrier up its roaring draught/The great throat of the chimney laughed.”
They roast nuts and apples, tell jokes and stories, and listen to the adults talk about their experiences: “We shared the fishing off Boar’s Head,/And round the rocky Isles of Shoals/The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;/The chowder on the sand-beach made,/Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,/With spoons of clam-shell from the pot”.
The next day, they wake to the sound of ox teams coming to clear the roads and to ask for their help in this community work, and the doctor stops by next to ask his mother to sit with one of his patients that night. And finally, "the floundering carrier bore/The village paper to our door."
...Wide swung again our ice-locked door,/And all the world was ours once more."
Over the course of the poem, the poet’s thoughts almost take the path of his memories, travelling between the past and the present: “Ah brother! Only I and thou/Are left of all that circle now,--/The dear home faces whereupon/That fitful firelight paled and shone.” Duty calls him back to the present and “importunate hours that hours succeed/Each clamorous with its own sharp need”. Still he hopes readers will “pause to view/These Flemish pictures of old days” and that their enjoyment will somehow flavor his own life in this beautiful image:
“…From unseen meadows newly mown, Or lilies floating in some pond,/Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond./The traveler owns the grateful sense/of sweetness near, he knows not whence,/and, pausing, takes with forehead bare/The benediction of the air”.
November 30, 2021
A beautiful poem that graciously allows readers into Whittier’s world. This poem evokes melancholic nostalgia intertwined with faith and hope. Grief and gratitude; musing recollections of boyhood fancies; the reaped rewards of hard day’s labor; family time by the hearth; slowing down and observation; perspective for others’ situations; charity. These are some of the topics that Whittier processes in this very personal, yet warm and inviting narrative.
January 5, 2021
I really enjoy Whittier’s rhythm and ability to translate stories of ‘straw into verses of gold.’ He has a great sense for imagery. The reader is transported to the setting immediately. It’s a great representation of a family community on a homestead in his day.
February 23, 2021
This is a very good poem.
Whittier plays with the concept of an idyll throughout, making sure not only to present us with a beautified, perhaps untenable world, but with reflections on death that all but himself and his brother faced (as in: all but them died), far after the snow had melted.
The opening of the poems sets the mood for most of the rest. We read as our character are isolated at the farmhouse, and we read the cold, unfeeling, inhuman, and human-balking nature of the snow that has fallen; then, our author conjures a fire to farm them all from the outside frost. The next section pauses the narrative for a while, continuing themes of death and hope ("who, hopeless, lays his dead away"). We get the impression from both this and the poem former that there is something to come -- the snow will melt and death leads to an afterlife.
This first bit is about half the poem, and the rest is dedicated to a number of characters reminiscing upon things in their past. We get to look at very distinct character types (such as the 'feminine' single sister, the somewhat unintelligence uncle, the youth to help bring a world without slavery to pass, and such). Throughout Whittier continues to reference death, and one moment of interest in relation to this is the idea that death does nothing: that even as someone is taken away, they live on in Heaven, so that we can look forward to seeing that person (continue to have the 'wealth' of that person) whilst gaining more 'wealth' by the experience of remembering them.
The ending of the poem is a good bookend to the beginning. Our character, having been isolated and spent their time wisely in the past, are reunited with the world proper -- the teeming of human life -- which the cold, inhuman snow and forced them from. He ends with an ode to memory.
All in all, I think I could re-read it and find some more interesting themes. I feel like his characters are meant to represent things perhaps from his life or general trends of people from the place in which the poem is set (similar to how other poets brought together an array of people representing their age in narrative-poem style). Good read (great pun).
Whittier plays with the concept of an idyll throughout, making sure not only to present us with a beautified, perhaps untenable world, but with reflections on death that all but himself and his brother faced (as in: all but them died), far after the snow had melted.
The opening of the poems sets the mood for most of the rest. We read as our character are isolated at the farmhouse, and we read the cold, unfeeling, inhuman, and human-balking nature of the snow that has fallen; then, our author conjures a fire to farm them all from the outside frost. The next section pauses the narrative for a while, continuing themes of death and hope ("who, hopeless, lays his dead away"). We get the impression from both this and the poem former that there is something to come -- the snow will melt and death leads to an afterlife.
This first bit is about half the poem, and the rest is dedicated to a number of characters reminiscing upon things in their past. We get to look at very distinct character types (such as the 'feminine' single sister, the somewhat unintelligence uncle, the youth to help bring a world without slavery to pass, and such). Throughout Whittier continues to reference death, and one moment of interest in relation to this is the idea that death does nothing: that even as someone is taken away, they live on in Heaven, so that we can look forward to seeing that person (continue to have the 'wealth' of that person) whilst gaining more 'wealth' by the experience of remembering them.
The ending of the poem is a good bookend to the beginning. Our character, having been isolated and spent their time wisely in the past, are reunited with the world proper -- the teeming of human life -- which the cold, inhuman snow and forced them from. He ends with an ode to memory.
All in all, I think I could re-read it and find some more interesting themes. I feel like his characters are meant to represent things perhaps from his life or general trends of people from the place in which the poem is set (similar to how other poets brought together an array of people representing their age in narrative-poem style). Good read (great pun).
October 20, 2024
This lovely titular poem describes a snow-storm in different ways starting with a physical description, but also comparing it to fanciful imagery. It was a look back into times past with scenes before the fire snug with family or going to the barn to care for the animals. You could feel the cold, see the snow swirling on the wind. The poem also describes when the snow ends, and the world opens back up again. It was a beautiful reflection of a moment in time.
The book I read included a poem by Emerson titled “The Snow-Storm” at the beginning. It also included illustrations, called decorations, by Aldren Watson. It was a beautiful little publishing of the poem in 1965 but which was written in 1866.
Other poems included in the book I read were “The Barefoot Boy”, “Barbara Frietchie”, and “Maud Muller”. Each of them vividly creates the story of the character described. The final poem, “In School-Days”, has a poignant view of a teacher and a child.
The book I read included a poem by Emerson titled “The Snow-Storm” at the beginning. It also included illustrations, called decorations, by Aldren Watson. It was a beautiful little publishing of the poem in 1965 but which was written in 1866.
Other poems included in the book I read were “The Barefoot Boy”, “Barbara Frietchie”, and “Maud Muller”. Each of them vividly creates the story of the character described. The final poem, “In School-Days”, has a poignant view of a teacher and a child.
May 30, 2020
At one time this little book containing Whittier's long poem about a family stuck inside due to a storm was read as inspiration of hope. The Civil War had divided us as a country, there was national mourning for the dead, and racial tensions were at an all time high. The poem invokes simple times with family and children. It's not the best or easiest long poem to read, but I felt called to read it this morning. It felt current.
..." Of such as he shall
Freedom's young apostles be,
Who, following in War's bloody trail,
Shall every lingering wrong assail;
All chains from limb and spirit strike,
Uplift the black and white alike;
Scatter before their swift advance
The darkness and the ignorance"
..." Of such as he shall
Freedom's young apostles be,
Who, following in War's bloody trail,
Shall every lingering wrong assail;
All chains from limb and spirit strike,
Uplift the black and white alike;
Scatter before their swift advance
The darkness and the ignorance"
October 20, 2024
A lovely poem about being trapped in for 3 days in a snow storm. Not in a scary way though, in a comforting, cozy way. Will definitely he re-reading this in the winter. Overall, the rhyming was good, made me wanna snuggle near a fire with a cup of tea, and spend time with my family. Favorite quote
"But sleep stole on as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lasping quiet waves on shores"
Perfectly describes the feeling of falling asleep in a room where you can hear people talking. I love this verse.
"But sleep stole on as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lasping quiet waves on shores"
Perfectly describes the feeling of falling asleep in a room where you can hear people talking. I love this verse.
December 28, 2020
This was a long poem, originally published as a small book. I first attempted to read it via audio, but soon found that it was going too quickly. This poem is about a family in post-Civil War Massachusetts reminiscing around a fireplace after a significant snowstorm. It has a nice, cozy feel about it and tells a little of what life was like at that time.
I think that it's best read under similar circumstances, slowly, in the winter, when you are cozy by a fire or under a warm blanket.
I think that it's best read under similar circumstances, slowly, in the winter, when you are cozy by a fire or under a warm blanket.
February 7, 2019
The copy I have is dated 1866. I love the old poets and writers. They wrote with more complexity than the writers of today who seem to write at a 4th grade level. I like to read this every winter. It transports me back to a simpler time when nature and life were considered in beauty and awe.
November 15, 2020
I had a student from Whittier who was actually related to John Greenleaf Whittier, and he gave me a book by JGW. But I never really appreciated him until reading Taylor's description of Whittier in his anthology.
Great work!
Great work!
April 6, 2022
I’m sure I could have rated this better but it is just not the kind of poetry I’m into. However he is from my town, it’s a printing from a no longer running press in my town, and my library is pushing poetry this month.
January 5, 2021
A beautifully descriptive poem about a winter snow storm at an isolated country farm. Loved it!
January 6, 2024
Old fashioned, sentimental nostalgia. A product of its time.
December 15, 2018
This is a pretty good and long poem.
January 5, 2014
John Greenleaf Whittier, Snowbound (Reilly and Britton, 1865)
[originally posted 16May2001]
I have problems with a good deal of pre-twentieth century poetry. Most of them can be summed up by obtaining, and skimming, a copy of John Greenleaf Whittier's Snowbound, a relatively short poem (for being a whole book) published in a rather lavish illustrated edition by Reilly and Britton at the beginning of the last century.
First, while the best poets use rhythm (in this case, iambic tetrameter) and rhyme as a way to challenge themselves, the rest use it as a convenient way to tell a boring story while keeping the reader's attention with rhyme. Or perhaps in this case I'm being too generous; there is no story here, more an impressionist piece on a number of friends and family of Whittier's who are snowed in for a night. I'm all for impressionism, but a hundred fifteen (albeit ten lines per page) pages of it?
Second, and most importantly, long poems from the nineteenth century sometimes have sections in them that have nothing to do with the rest of the poem; extensive wanderings of thought that require to poet to get back on track int he most jarring of ways. Such is the case here as Whittier, an abolitionist, goes off his snow-bound folks for a number of pages while injecting a rant about slavery. Don't bother trying to figure out what it has to do with the rest of the poem; you could spend years trying to reconcile the two with no success.
Lastly, in order to keep a reader's interest, rhythm and rhyme have to be used in something approaching an inventive way. Having a comma at the end of every line and no variation at all in the rhythm makes for an exceptionally boring poem (or perhaps a passable pop song); over a hundred pages of it makes for good kindling.
Awful. Absolutely awful. *
[originally posted 16May2001]
I have problems with a good deal of pre-twentieth century poetry. Most of them can be summed up by obtaining, and skimming, a copy of John Greenleaf Whittier's Snowbound, a relatively short poem (for being a whole book) published in a rather lavish illustrated edition by Reilly and Britton at the beginning of the last century.
First, while the best poets use rhythm (in this case, iambic tetrameter) and rhyme as a way to challenge themselves, the rest use it as a convenient way to tell a boring story while keeping the reader's attention with rhyme. Or perhaps in this case I'm being too generous; there is no story here, more an impressionist piece on a number of friends and family of Whittier's who are snowed in for a night. I'm all for impressionism, but a hundred fifteen (albeit ten lines per page) pages of it?
Second, and most importantly, long poems from the nineteenth century sometimes have sections in them that have nothing to do with the rest of the poem; extensive wanderings of thought that require to poet to get back on track int he most jarring of ways. Such is the case here as Whittier, an abolitionist, goes off his snow-bound folks for a number of pages while injecting a rant about slavery. Don't bother trying to figure out what it has to do with the rest of the poem; you could spend years trying to reconcile the two with no success.
Lastly, in order to keep a reader's interest, rhythm and rhyme have to be used in something approaching an inventive way. Having a comma at the end of every line and no variation at all in the rhythm makes for an exceptionally boring poem (or perhaps a passable pop song); over a hundred pages of it makes for good kindling.
Awful. Absolutely awful. *
February 25, 2016
just read this one poem...
What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.
O Time and Change! - with hair as gray
As was my sire's that winter day,
How strange it seems with so much gone,
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now, -
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.
We tread the paths their feet have worn,
We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o'er.
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor!
Yet love will dream, and Faith will trust
(Since He who knows our need is just),
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!
What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.
O Time and Change! - with hair as gray
As was my sire's that winter day,
How strange it seems with so much gone,
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now, -
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.
We tread the paths their feet have worn,
We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o'er.
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor!
Yet love will dream, and Faith will trust
(Since He who knows our need is just),
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!
October 13, 2015
This poem written in 1866 from the point of view of an elderly man, is a fond remembrance of the author's family and two visitors caught together in a winter storm and snow bound at home. Whittier evokes the power of the storm and the delight and warmth of the safety of home and family. The poem concludes with the intrusion of the outside world as a path is carved in the road by teamsters, a doctor calls for his mother's aid and a newspaper is delivered with its reports of what would have been the aftermath of the Civil War. It is an ode to a moment in boyhood clearly held dear by Whittier who looks back over long years and the deaths of nearly all the people in the poem. His description of the storm is highly successful, and although others who have reviewed this work have lambasted it as 'awful' and 'boring', it is a product of both the man and his time. His elegiac style is perhaps not for everyone.
My edition was printed in 1892 the year Whittier died, and is No. 71 of a small run of 250 copies. The book itself is beautiful, bound in white and embossed with gold. Printed on 'Japanese paper' thick and creamy in texture and appearance, the poem is illustrated with nine photogravures by E. H. Garrett.
My edition was printed in 1892 the year Whittier died, and is No. 71 of a small run of 250 copies. The book itself is beautiful, bound in white and embossed with gold. Printed on 'Japanese paper' thick and creamy in texture and appearance, the poem is illustrated with nine photogravures by E. H. Garrett.
March 26, 2009
I found this book on my bookshelves. It belonged to a great uncle and appeared to be a school book, Maynard English Classic Series. As I thumbed through it I found a poem entitled, "Forgiveness" which I like a lot, so I decided to read the rest of the book starting with "Snowbound."
Gave this poem a three because I need to read it again...had a lot of flowery language, but I enjoyed it. Am reading the rest of the poems in the book, as it is small (not hardcover as discribed) and fits in my purse for those moments when I am 'waiting'....
Gave this poem a three because I need to read it again...had a lot of flowery language, but I enjoyed it. Am reading the rest of the poems in the book, as it is small (not hardcover as discribed) and fits in my purse for those moments when I am 'waiting'....
January 29, 2009
Early 19th-century New England. A poet's memory of his boyhood household being snowed-in. A series of character-sketches. Aptly captures the event both in its particularity as well as its universality. The rhyme and meter feel old-fashioned and naieve, but there's a genuine sweetness and realism there.
September 7, 2012
A Quaker poet who came into his writing discipline later in life. The story poem of Snowbound is so elegantly written, engorged with life applications and endearing memories, that I found myself wishing for simpler times, a larger than life imagination,.. and the relationships so delicately outlined by verse and rhyme.
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