Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Poem for Tuesday: The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens

A reader (okay, a friend on whom I foisted this blog) recommended the following as another "quintessential winter poem" in response to my remarks about Frost's "Stopping by Woods....."

I'm grateful for this.

The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;


And to have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; And not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

No comments:

Post a Comment