"The Snow"

The Snow

For weeks the snow went riding by,

        Borne on the high, shrill winds

That seethed thro’ cracks and eddied the grain

        In the farmer’s well-filled bins,

Or mourned—poor outcasts of the night—

        As a penitent for his sins.

For weeks the snow spun round the hill,

        And settled on the lea;

It climbed up high about the doors,

        And spangled every tree;

It reached one soft, white, jeweled arm

        Around the cold, dark sea.

It deepened on the frozen mere

        And on the frozen bay;

And on the porches and the roofs

        Unevenly it lay,

Until the wind sprung from the North

        And carried it away,

And bore it, hissing, up the air

        In a long, funnelled whirl;

Or pressed its bulk around some tree

        In a deep, voluptuous curl;

Or hurried it down to the South

        In a nervous, blinding swirl.

Long icicles grew, drop on drop,

        And hung from all the eaves,

And every pane was frescoed o’er

        With pictures Zero weaves—

Like cobwebs, when the heavy frost

        Is on the autumn leaves.

And still the snow fell on the fields

        That once were sweet with hay,

And on the lawn where, soft and deep,

        Once cherry blossoms lay. . .

And on the grave of the little child

        That laughed with us last May.

"The Snow" as it appears in Ella Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).

A draft of "The Snow" on onionskin paper, courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham WA.