Winter Wonder Lands: Some Poems for the Season

"Winter Night in a Forest," 1853, by Vilhelm Kyhn. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen. Public Domain

Drive south down I-95 in the new year, and you’ll join a fleet of cars with license plates from New York, Massachusetts, and Canada. These are the “snow birds,” off to exchange winter’s snow and frigid temperatures for the sunshine and balmy breezes of Miami and Key West. Drive north during this same season, and you’ll see few travelers with Florida plates heading north to revel in the Arctic climate.

Many people take this dim view of winter. Spring is that long-awaited season when the earth unlocks and there’s not a snowplow to be found. Summer brings the months of leisure, when school children have put aside their books and play backyard games while Dad fusses with the grill and Mom fusses at him. Fall sports a coat of many colors, returns us to more stringent schedules and a busier pace, and ends with a day of thanksgiving for life’s blessings.

But winter—poor winter is that unwelcome visitor many of us dread, that grouchy uncle or crotchety maiden aunt who chills the air and runs a shiver down one’s spine and through the innards. For those who dislike this season of slippery roads and heavy coats, winter (which derives from an old German word meaning “time of water”) constitutes a cold, damp purgatory between autumn and spring.

Poor winter is that unwelcome visitor many of us dread. "Allegory of Winter," 18th century, by Jacques de La Joue the Younger. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public Domain

Like these shivering folks, poets have also lamented what Shakespeare described as “barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold.” In her poem “In the Bleak Midwinter,” best known today as a carol, Christina Rossetti deploys such harsh imagery—"earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone”—to set the background for the Christmas birth in a stable. Centuries earlier, an anonymous medieval poet wrote “Wynter Wakeneth Al My Care,” or “Winter wakens all my sorrow,” where winter serves, as it has done so often in poetry, as a metaphor for death.

On the other hand, however, are those poets who have celebrated this season, finding in its barren landscapes and bleak weather comforts, silence, and beauty.

Hearth and Home

Winter is the time for enjoying the warmth and comfort of hearth and home. "Woman Reading in Front of a Fireplace," 1735, by Pierre Parrocel. Oil on canvas. National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm. Public Domain

“Winter is the time for comfort,” poet Edith Sitwell once wrote, “for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is time for home.”

For many of us, just reading Sitwell’s brief compendium of pleasures brings back our own “time for comfort,” when we faced a winter storm in our home or apartment with plenty of heat, a well-stocked pantry, a special drink, and a good book or friends and family at hand.

This is the setting for “Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl,” the masterpiece of John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). Here, the poet describes a New England blizzard of his youth and offers readers a nostalgic look back at the family members who gathered around the fireplace. “So all night long the storm roared on; the morning broke without a sun,” and as the long storm continued unabated throughout the day and into the next night, we see the narrator and his family going about their chores, swapping stories, and reading books. Images of these “winter joys” occur throughout the poem, as in this description of the treats waiting by the fire:

And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons’ straddling feet, The mug of cider simmered slow, The apples sputtered in a row, And, close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October’s wood.

Though Whittier writes of a blinding storm, even a modest snowfall can muffle the noise of the world.

Stillness

Some poets have remarked on the quietude and stillness of a new snowfall. "Winter Landscape," 1882, by Wilhelm Schröter. Oil on canvas. Public Domain

I have lived much of my life in Western North Carolina and parts of Virginia. In these places, which lack the snow removal equipment of many other states, even a few inches of snow bring the world to an abrupt and pleasant halt. Other than a few adventurous owners of vehicles with four-wheel drive, no one ventures onto the roads. And until the children rouse themselves from sleep and head out to make snowmen or find some hill for sledding, the world is as quiet as you’ll ever hear it in these parts.

Some poets have remarked on this great quietude. In Robert Frost’s famous poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” this silence is strongly inferred. We can feel that hush in these lines about the narrator’s horse:

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

And the lullaby rhythm and diction of the last stanza enhance this sensation of peace and quiet:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

During my online explorations of winter verse and tranquility, an unfamiliar poem by an unfamiliar poet, Ruth Velenski, snared my attention. The first two stanzas of “The Silence of the Snow” encapsulate my own experience of waking to a new snowfall and feeling the lovely stillness it brings:

The night sky is a dull grey white. An opaque dust sheet floats so light Upon the roofs and lamps and cars. It settles so softly like falling stars.

It sneaks in crevices and onto window sills. Piles up in soft layers over roads and hills, Weighs down branches, envelopes bark, Skips and flutters across the depth of dark.

A Beauty Clean and Pure

The snow blankets the scenery and transforms barren branches into gloved fingers of pure white snow. "Forest in Winter," 1882, by Anders Andersen-Lundby. Oil on canvas. Public Domain

In Western North Carolina, the Smoky Mountains in the summer ride the landscape like enormous green waves, while in the fall they are blanketed by vibrant red-and-gold quilts. Stripped of their foliage by late autumn’s cold temperatures, however, these mountains become a barebones extravaganza of nooks and crannies, crevices, and naked stone, displaying a beauty all their own, particularly when crested by frost or snow.

Many poets have given way to this spell cast by wintertime’s charms, its darkness, its skies, its stark, stripped-down landscapes, its ice and frost. In “It Sifts From Leaden Sieves,” Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) never mentions the words “snow” or “winter,” but beautifully describes how this season alters the landscape. Here are the first two stanzas:

It sifts from Leaden Sieves – It powders all the Wood. It fills with Alabaster Wool The Wrinkles of the Road –

It makes an Even Face Of Mountain, and of Plain – Unbroken Forehead from the East Unto the East again –

In “Winter’s Beauty,” W.H. Davies (1871–1940) of the United Kingdom begins his poem by briefly describing the joys provided by spring, summer, and fall; he then shifts to an appreciation of winter, ending his verse with this word painting of the season:

Then welcome, winter, with thy power To make this tree a big white flower; To make this tree a lovely sight, With fifty brown arms draped in white, While thousands of small fingers show In soft white gloves of purest snow.

The last two lines beautifully capture those hours before the sun melts away those soft white gloves.

Stopping by Sofa on a Snowy Evening

As I observed earlier, more than the other seasons, our feelings about winter sharply divide us into two camps. Some relish the pleasures brought by stiff winds and cold temperatures, while others (perhaps the majority) abhor the iron grip of winter’s handshake. The former often enter the house red-cheeked, bright-eyed, and clapping their hands together, while the latter return from work or errands hunched over in coats, scarves, and caps, looking as if they’d just stepped in from the January wastes of Siberia.

Yet beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not in the temperature of the skin. Those readers who delve into winter poetry will discover that some of these poets contemplated the frozen landscape from the window of a warm kitchen or den. Clearly, we can appreciate winter’s allure without contracting pneumonia or even a case of the shivers.

Poetry—good poetry—allows us to experience people, places, and things through the senses of another. The poets allow us to see the world through a different pair of eyes. And so it is with their verses of winter. Their imagery, their metaphors, and their word paintings open up the landscape for us and broaden our horizons.

So, while the winds howl and the snow falls, snuggle up in a blanket, pour yourself a mug of Whittier’s cider, and enjoy some winter verses.