The Snowstorm

Ralph Waldo Emerson“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson• 1803-1882• Grew up in Boston, Massachusetts

with William Emerson and Ruth Haskins

• Father was a minister, died before Emerson was 8

• Second of five sons

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Preferred his middle name Waldo• Boston Latin School in 1812• Harvard College in 1817

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Writing Style• Spiritual and philosophical• Started the transcendentalism

movement• Focused on individualism, life, nature

• His writings relate to transcendentalism

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited airHides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feetDelayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosedIn a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind's masonry.Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificerCurves 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 heFor 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 worldIs all his own, retiring, as he were not,

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished ArtTo mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,The frolic architecture of the snow.

• Many idioms such as• “Announced by all the trumpets of the

sky”• Makes it seem like the skies rolling

out the red carpet for the snowstorm, as if like an important person

• Gives the poem a majestic tone, as if announcing a king’s arrival.

• There is plenty of personification“Furnished with tile, the fierce artificerCurves his white bastions with projected roof Round every windward stake, or tree, or door”

• Describes the snowstorm as an artificer or crafter, making their snow like art

• Throughout the entire poem, the snowstorm is described as a person.