Winter Visions & Verse
Winter Sun, Birmingham, Ohio
The Snow Fairy - Claude McKay
I
Throughout the afternoon I watched them there,
Snow-fairies falling, falling from the sky,
Whirling fantastic in the misty air,
Contending fierce for space supremacy.
And they flew down a mightier force at night,
As though in heaven there was revolt and riot,
And they, frail things had taken panic flight
Down to the calm earth seeking peace and quiet.
I went to bed and rose at early dawn
To see them huddled together in a heap,
Each merged into the other upon the lawn,
Worn out by the sharp struggle, fast asleep.
The sun shone brightly on them half the day,
By night they stealthily had stol’n away.
II
And suddenly my thoughts then turned to you
Who came to me upon a winter’s night,
When snow-sprites round my attic window flew, Your hair disheveled, eyes aglow with light.
My heart was like the weather when you came,
The wanton winds were blowing loud and long;
But you, with joy and passion all aflame,
You danced and sang a lilting summer song.
I made room for you in my little bed,
Took covers from the closet fresh and warm,
A downful pillow for your scented head,
And lay down with you resting in my arm. You went with Dawn. You left me ere the day,
The lonely actor of a dreamy play.
Published 1922 in “Harlem Shadows
Winter in Tappan Square at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio
The Snow Fairy by Claude McKay, read by Leonard Wilson of Springfield, Ohio courtesy of ©Poems Cafe (www.poemscafe.com)
The bodies of poetry and photography are replete with examples showcasing the four seasons. It’s so natural because all four seasons instill in us shared and many times very personal experiences. It’s winter in Ohio so I took the time to showcase some of my “wintry” photos as well as two of my favorite winter poems. I can fairly hear the harness bells ring and feel the warmth of someone dear on a cold winter’s night. That is the very goal of poetry and photography, indeed its very purpose.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening - Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
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.
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.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, poem by Robert Frost, published in the collection New Hampshire (1923). One of his most frequently explicated works, it describes a solitary traveler in a horse-drawn carriage who is both driven by the business at hand and transfixed by a wintry woodland scene. The poem is composed of four iambic tetrameter quatrains, and the meditative lyric derives its incantatory tone from an interlocking rhyme scheme of aaba bbcb ccdc dddd.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stopping-by-Woods-on-a-Snowy-Evening
A Winter’s Walk, Birmingham, Ohio
‘The Snow Fairy’ is an image-rich poem in which McKay uses the winter season, a snowfall, and the appearance of a lover to depict a dream-like state of mind. Throughout the poem, he uses lines that help the reader imagine the scene in great detail. These are physical details, such as that of snow in the air, but also emotional ones as the speaker develops a narrative around the snowflakes.
In ‘The Snow Fairy,’ McKay engages with themes of nature and dreams. The latter also includes some elements of creative magic as the poet uses interesting images and metaphors to depict his experiences with snow and the lover in the second sonnet. Nature is the primary focus of the first sonnet. He spends the lines uses figurative language to describe the snowfall as something supernatural, a parade of “fairies” falling from the sky only to pile up on the ground, merge, and disappear as the day gets warmer. The language in these lines is perfectly fitting for the content and the tone the poet wanted to create. In the end, both sonnets are inescapably dream-like.
Groundhog Day Winter Storm - 2012, Oberlin, Ohio
The poem read by its author.
