Home ⇒ 📌Wallace Stevens ⇒ The Snow Man
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And 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.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- Neither Snow When all of a sudden the city air filled with snow, The distinguishable flakes Blowing sideways, Looked like krill Fleeing the maw of an advancing whale. At least they looked that way to me From the taxi window, And since I happened to be sitting That fading Sunday afternoon In the very center of the […]...
- Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
- Snow Geese Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last! What a task To ask Of anything, or anyone, Yet it is ours, And not by the century or the year, but by the hours. One fall day I heard Above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound I did not know, […]...
- Snow White's Acne At first she was sure it was just a bit of dried strawberry juice, Or a fleck of her mother’s red nail polish that had flaked off When she’d patted her daughter to sleep the night before. But as she scrubbed, Snow felt a bump, something festering Under the surface, like a tapeworm curled up […]...
- Snow-Flakes Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, Over the woodlands brown and bare Over the harvest-fields forsaken, Silent and soft and slow Descends the snow....
- At the Melting of the Snow There’s a sunny Southern land, And it’s there that I would be Where the big hills stand, In the South Countrie! When the wattles bloom again, Then it’s time for us to go To the old Monaro country At the melting of the snow. To the East or to the West, Or wherever you may […]...
- A March Snow Let the old snow be covered with the new: The trampled snow, so soiled, and stained, and sodden. Let it be hidden wholly from our view By pure white flakes, all trackless and untrodden. When Winter dies, low at the sweet Spring’s feet Let him be mantled in a clean, white sheet. Let the old […]...
- The Snow-Storm 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 hill and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates […]...
- Snow The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was Spawning snow and pink rose against it Soundlessly collateral and incompatible: World is suddener than we fancy it. World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of […]...
- Improvisations: Light And Snow I The girl in the room beneath Before going to bed Strums on a mandolin The three simple tunes she knows. How inadequate they are to tell how her heart feels! When she has finished them several times She thrums the strings aimlessly with her finger-nails And smiles, and thinks happily of many things. II […]...
- Snow SNOW took us away from the smoke valleys into white mountains, we saw velvet blue cows eating a vermillion grass and they gave us a pink milk. Snow changes our bones into fog streamers caught by the wind and spelled into many dances. Six bits for a sniff of snow in the old days bought […]...
- The Snow Fairy I Throughout the afternoon I watched them there, Snow-fairies falling, falling from the sky, Whirling fantastic in the misty air, Contending fierce for space supremacy. And they flew down a mightier force at night, As though in heaven there was revolt and riot, And they, frail things had taken panic flight Down to the calm […]...
- Shoveling Snow With Buddha In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok You would never see him doing such a thing, Tossing the dry snow over a mountain Of his bare, round shoulder, His hair tied in a knot, A model of concentration. Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word For what he […]...
- Poem (Old man in the crystal morning after snow) Old man in the crystal morning after snow, Your throat swathed in a muffler, your bent Figure building the snow man which is meant For the grandchild’s target, do you know This fat cartoon, his eyes pocked in with coal Nears you each time your breath smokes the air, Lewdly grinning out of a private […]...
- My Boy Jack 1914-18 Have you news of my boy Jack?” Not this tide. “When d’you think that he’ll come back?” Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Has any one else had word of him?: “ Not this tide. For what is sunk will hardly swim, Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. “Oh, dear, […]...
- On a Lady Throwing Snow-Balls at Her Lover [From the Latin of Petronious Ascanius.] When, wanton fair, the snowy orb you throw, I feel a fire before unknown in snow. E’en coldest snow I find has pow’r to warm My breast, when flung by Julia’s lovely arm. T’elude love’s pow’rful arts I strive in vain, If ice and snow can latent fires contain. […]...
- In snow thou comest In snow thou comest Thou shalt go with the resuming ground, The sweet derision of the crow, And Glee’s advancing sound. In fear thou comest Thou shalt go at such a gait of joy That man anew embark to live Upon the depth of thee....
- Beyond the Snow Belt Over the local stations, one by one, Announcers list disasters like dark poems That always happen in the skull of winter. But once again the storm has passed us by: Lovely and moderate, the snow lies down While shouting children hurry back to play, And scarved and smiling citizens once more Sweep down their easy […]...
- Mad As The Mist And Snow Bolt and bar the shutter, For the foul winds blow: Our minds are at their best this night, And I seem to know That everything outside us is Mad as the mist and snow. Horace there by Homer stands, Plato stands below, And here is Tully’s open page. How many years ago Were you and […]...
- Snow beneath whose chilly softness Snow beneath whose chilly softness Some that never lay Make their first Repose this Winter I admonish Thee Blanket Wealthier the Neighbor We so new bestow Than thine acclimated Creature Wilt Thou, Austere Snow?...
- Like Snow She, then, like snow in a dark night, Fell secretly. And the world waked With dazzling of the drowsy eye, So that some muttered ‘Too much light’, And drew the curtains close. Like snow, warmer than fingers feared, And to soil friendly; Holding the histories of the night In yet unmelted tracks....
- Snow In the gloom of whiteness, In the great silence of snow, A child was sighing And bitterly saying: “Oh, They have killed a white bird up there on her nest, The down is fluttering from her breast!” And still it fell through that dusky brightness On the child crying for the bird of the snow....
- Snow Late December: my father and I Are going to New York, to the circus. He holds me On his shoulders in the bitter wind: Scraps of white paper Blow over the railroad ties. My father liked To stand like this, to hold me So he couldn’t see me. I remember Staring straight ahead Into the […]...
- Snow ‘Who affirms that crystals are alive?’ I affirm it, let who will deny: Crystals are engendered, wax and thrive, Wane and wither; I have seen them die. Trust me, masters, crystals have their day, Eager to attain the perfect norm, Lit with purpose, potent to display Facet, angle, colour, beauty, form. Water-crystals need for flower […]...
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs No matter what life you lead The virgin is a lovely number: Cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper, Arms and legs made of Limoges, Lips like Vin Du Rhône, Rolling her china-blue doll eyes Open and shut. Open to say, Good Day Mama, And shut for the thrust Of the unicorn. She is unsoiled. She […]...
- The Snow that never drifts The Snow that never drifts The transient, fragrant snow That comes a single time a Year Is softly driving now So thorough in the Tree At night beneath the star That it was February’s Foot Experience would swear Like Winter as a Face We stern and former knew Repaired of all but Loneliness By Nature’s […]...
- Snow No breath of wind, No gleam of sun – Still the white snow Whirls softly down Twig and bough And blade and thorn All in an icy Quiet, forlorn. Whispering, rustling, Through the air On still and stone, Roof, – everywhere, It heaps its powdery Crystal flakes, Of every tree A mountain makes; ‘Til pale […]...
- Images of snow – february 1996 snow is a thousand flowers The chinese probably said Hundreds and thousands this morning Drop their garlands on my head Last night the festoons started Long before we went to bed Snow is a white-furred rabbit The chinese probably wrote Hedgerows and fields this morning Wear a similar fluffy coat Last night the winter danced […]...
- Two Travellers perishing in Snow Two Travellers perishing in Snow The Forests as they froze Together heard them strengthening Each other with the words That Heaven if Heaven must contain What Either left behind And then the cheer too solemn grew For language, and the wind Long steps across the features took That Love had touched the Morn With reverential […]...
- The Snow Storm No hawk hangs over in this air: The urgent snow is everywhere. The wing adroiter than a sail Must lean away from such a gale, Abandoning its straight intent, Or else expose tough ligament And tender flesh to what before Meant dampened feathers, nothing more. Forceless upon our backs there fall Infrequent flakes hexagonal, Devised […]...
- The House Of Dust: Part 01: 05: The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain. . . It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls Down golden-windowed walls. We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain, We do not remember the red roots whence we rose, But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while […]...
- In Snow O English mother, in the ruddy glow Hugging your baby closer when outside You see the silent, soft, and cruel snow Falling again, and think what ills betide Unshelter’d creatures, your sad thoughts may go Where War and Winter now, two spectre-wolves, Hunt in the freezing vapour that involves Those Asian peaks of ice and […]...
- The Plains A land, as far as the eye can see, where the waving grasses grow Or the plains are blackened and burnt and bare, where the false mirages go Like shifting symbols of hope deferred – land where you never know. Land of the plenty or land of want, where the grey Companions dance, Feast or […]...
- Fish Crier I KNOW a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with a Voice like a north wind blowing over corn stubble In January. He dangles herring before prospective customers evincing A joy identical with that of Pavlowa dancing. His face is that of a man terribly glad to be selling fish, Terribly glad that God […]...
- Snow Day Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, Its white flag waving over everything, The landscape vanished, Not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness, And beyond these windows The government buildings smothered, Schools and libraries buried, the post office lost Under the noiseless drift, The paths of trains softly blocked, The world fallen […]...
- Dust of Snow The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued....
- To Waken An Old Lady Old age is A flight of small Cheeping birds Skimming Bare trees Above a snow glaze. Gaining and failing They are buffeted By a dark wind- But what? On harsh weedstalks The flock has rested- The snow Is covered with broken Seed husks And the wind tempered With a shrill Piping of plenty....
- A Patch of Old Snow There’s a patch of old snow in a corner That I should have guessed Was a blow-away paper the rain Had brought to rest. It is speckled with grime as if Small print overspread it, The news of a day I’ve forgotten If I ever read it....
- Snow flakes Snow flakes. I counted till they danced so Their slippers leaped the town, And then I took a pencil To note the rebels down. And then they grew so jolly I did resign the prig, And ten of my once stately toes Are marshalled for a jig!...
- A little Snow was here and there A little Snow was here and there Disseminated in her Hair Since she and I had met and played Decade had gathered to Decade But Time had added not obtained Impregnable the Rose For summer too indelible Too obdurate for Snows...