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| 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. | 5 |
| The sled 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. | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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, | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, | |
| Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work, | |
| The frolic architecture of the snow. | |
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