We had one last winter storm that coated the trees and made the roads slippery for a while. Subsequently, the temperatures soared into the 40s and 50s so scenes like this disappeared to be replaced with the brown of winter. But the iris are growing and other flowers are poking up. Here is a selection of a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson that has always stuck with me from my youth.
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, 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 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.
Selection of a portion of The Snow Storm by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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