To mimic in [slow structures], stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The [frolic architecture] of the snow.
NOTES AND QUESTIONS
Biography. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was a native of Boston, born not far from Franklin’s birthplace. He was the oldest among that brilliant group of New England scholars and writers that developed under the influence of Harvard College. Emerson was a quiet boy, but that he had high ambitions and sturdy determination is shown by the fact that he worked his own way through college. He is best known for his essays, full of noble ideas and wise philosophy, but he also wrote poetry. As a poet he was careless of his meter, making his lines often purposely rugged, but they are always charged and bristling with thoughts that shock and thrill like electric batteries. In 1836 he wrote the “Concord Hymn” containing the famous lines:
“Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world!”
His poems of nature are clear-cut and vivid as snapshots. “The Humble Bee,” as a critic puts it, “seems almost to shine with the heat and light of summer.”
Discussion. 1. Picture the scene described in the first five lines. 2. Compare with the picture given you in the first stanza of “Snow-Flakes,” page 80. 3. Read in a way to bring out the contrast between the wild storm and the scene within the “farmhouse at the garden’s end.” 4. What is meant by “fierce artificer”? 5. What is the “tile” with which the poet imagines the “unseen quarry” is furnished? 6. Of what are the “white bastions” made? 7. Does the use of the word “windward” add to the picture and does such detail add to the beauty of the poem or detract from it? 8. Who is described as “myriad-handed”? 9. What is the mockery in hanging “Parian wreaths” on a coop or kennel? 10. What picture do lines 20, 21, and 22 give you? 11. What does the “mad wind’s night-work” do for Art?
Phrases