Thursday, January 6, 2011

Winter Patterns




Much like the patterns created by the frost and snow, our winter days develop patterns of their own.  Chores take longer and although lengthening, daylight hours are still very short.  Even so, we find it important to pause... to enjoy...
'the frolic architecture of the snow'.

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 windware 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.

excerpted from The Snow Storm by Ralph Waldo Emerson

8 comments:

  1. Such a beautiful post.
    Thank you for reminding me to pause and enjoy today.

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  2. Wonderful poem and pictures, what a lot you've got - ours is gone for the oment and I am happily noticing green buds emerging on bushes.

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  3. How lovely, we often forget just to stop and take in the simple beauty of it all. x

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  4. Thanks, everyone...love this poem more every time I read it.

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  5. Okay, you killed me with this one. I miss the snow covered landscape so much. It was snowy in England over Christmas, but not this kind of snowy.

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  6. This is really lovely. What joy you are bringing to life.

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