Those Winter Sundays

Daily Dose

From Giants in the Earth, by O. E. Rolvaag, translated by Lincoln Colcord

AS

"... As he opened the door that morning, saw two feet of covering the ground, and felt the bitter cold stinging his face, he had the irresistible impulse to fling himself down in the snowdrift and cry like a baby!..."

From Book II, Chapter II, The Power of Evil in High Places, II

Daily Dose

From TransAtlantic, by Colum McCann

FIERCE

"A fierce wind blew across the bankside snow, kicked small eddies into the air. The trees made a dark run into the flat distance."

From Book Two, icehouse, 1863 - 89

Daily Dose

From The Selected Poems, by A. R. Ammons

WINTER SCENE

There is now not a single
leaf on the cherry tree:
except when the jay
plummets in, lights, and,
in pure clarity, squalls:
then every branch
quivers and
breaks out in blue leaves. 

Daily Dose

From The Poems of Sarah Teasdale 

 SNOW SONG

Fairy snow, fairy snow,
Blowing, blowing everywhere,
Would that I
Too, could fly
Lightly, lightly through the air.

Like a wee, crystal star
I should drift, I should blow
Near, more near,
To my dear
Where he comes through the snow.

I should fly to my love
Like a flake in the storm,
I should die,
I should die,
On his lips that are warm. 

Daily Dose

From The Collected Poems, by Sylvia Plath

THE SNOWMAN ON THE MOOR

Stalemated their armies stood, with tottering banners:
She flung from a room
Still ringing with bruit of insults and dishonors

And in fury left him
Glowering at the coal-fire: ‘Come find me'—her last taunt.
He did not come

But sat on, guarding his grim battlement.
By the doorstep
Her winter-beheaded daisies, marrowless, gaunt,

Warned her to keep
Indoors with politic goodwill, not haste
Into a landscape

Of stark wind-harrowed hills and weltering mist;
But from the house
She stalked intractable as a driven ghost

Across moor snows
Pocked by rock-claw and rabbit-track: she must yet win
Him to his knees—

Let him send police and hounds to bring her in.
Nursing her rage
Through bare whistling heather, over stiles of black stone,

To the world's white edge
She came, and called hell to subdue an unruly man
And join her siege.

It was no fire-blurting fork-tailed demon
Volcanoed hot
From marble snow-heap of moor to ride that woman

With spur and knout
Down from pride's size: instead, a grisly-thewed,
Austere, corpse-white

Giant heaved into the distance, stone-hatcheted,
Sky-high, and snow
Floured his whirling beard, and at his tread

Ambushed birds by
Dozens dropped dead in the hedges: o she felt
No love in his eye,

Worse—saw dangling from that spike-studded belt
Ladies' sheaved skulls:
Mournfully the dry tongues clacked their guilt:

‘Our wit made fools
Of kings, unmanned kings' sons: our masteries
Amused court halls:

For that brag, we barnacle these iron thighs.'
Throned in the thick
Of a blizzard, the giant roared up with his chittering trophies.

From brunt of axe-crack
She shied sideways: a white fizz! and the giant, pursuing,
Crumbled to smoke.

Humbled then, and crying,
The girl bent homeward, brimful of gentle talk
And mild obeying.

Daily Dose

From Collected Verse, by Ogden Nash

THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN

I've never seen an abominable snowman,
I'm hoping not to see one,
I'm also hoping, if I do,
That it will be a wee one.

Daily Dose

From Last and Lost Poems, by Delmore Schwartz

POEM

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 nightmare?
He is the white cold shadow of your soul.

You build his comic head, you place his comic hat;
Old age is not so serious, and I
By the window sad and watchful as a cat,
Build to this poem of old age and of snow,
And weep: you are my snow man and I know
I near you, you near him, all of us must die.

Firwood

Daily Dose

From Seven Gothic Tales, by Isak Dinesen,

NOW

"Now they had to wander in opposite parts of town, in snowy streets and parks, their small hands in muffs, gazing at cold naked statues and frozen birds in the trees."

From The Supper at Elsinore

Daily Dose

From Collected Poems, by Heinrich Heine, translated by Louis Untermeyer

O FRIENDS

"A new song, a better song,
O friends, I speak to thee!
Here upon Earth we shall full soon
A heavenly realm decree.
Joyful we on earth shall be
And we shall starve no more;
The rotten belly shall not feed
On the fruits of industry."

From Germany: A Winter's Tale

Daily Dose

From All the Odes, by Pablo Neruda, edited (and translated) by Ilan Stavans

SOMEDAY, WINTER

"I will be able to reach
your tallest space of whiteness
without you biting me,
I will pass by while greeting
your unchained monarchy.
I will tip my hat
under the same rain
of my childhood
because I will be sure
of your waters..."

From 220 / Ode to Winter

Daily Dose

From King Lear, by William Shakespeare

"We'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there's no laboring i' th' winter."

Fool, Act II, Scene 4

February Afternoon

To Flowers From Italy in Winter

Runes, Blurs, Sap Rising

Lines Written on a Window

The Night Is Darkening Round Me

To a Leaf Falling in Winter

The Snow Storm