The Snow Man
The Snow Man
Original Text
Harmonium (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, [September 7], 1923): 24. York University Library Special Collections 734
1One must have a mind of winter
2To regard the frost and the boughs
3Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
4And have been cold a long time
5To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
6The spruces rough in the distant glitter
7Of the January sun; and not to think
8Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
9In the sound of a few leaves,
10Which is the sound of the land
11Full of the same wind
12That is blowing in the same bare place
13For the listener, who listens in the snow,
14And, nothing himself, beholds
15Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Publication Start Year
1921
Publication Notes
Poetry 19 (October 1921)
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 2000.