The Snow-Storm Poem Analysis

The Snow-Storm poem analysis breaks down the importance of isolation in winter and the transformation found within that.

Disclaimer: This post may include affiliate links. If you purchase through my link, I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. See my full disclosure policy, here.

About the Author:

Ralph Waldo Emerson lived from 1803-1882. He was a poet, essayist, lecturer, and philosopher who led the mid-19th-century transcendentalist movement and supported individual thinking. 

The psychology of self-reliance was one of Emerson's most influential philosophical breakthroughs. His literary works involve an internal investigation of nature, individualism, and transcendentalism.  

Ralph Waldo Emerson The Snow-Storm Poetry Analysis

Theme: Isolation and Transformation

When I read this poem, the first stanza makes me reflect on winter as an isolating time. Everything is snow-covered and silent. This kind of isolation can be daunting because we are social creatures. Winter literally separates us from people and nature. It forces us inside and propels us to internalize ourselves and our existence. 

Autumn is the beginning of our transformative voyage. Nature endures this before our eyes when the leaves fall and the world dies around us-- we internally do the same. During winter, we subconsciously allow parts of ourselves to die because something we do no longer serves us. We witness through nature that transformation is a natural process of life.

The second stanza shows us the beauty in transformation. There are light and dark elements of this process. This poem reminds us of both. One is a wild destruction that can melt away when the sun rises, and the other is the magnitude of beauty beyond comprehension that resonates within a soul. Emerson shows this as if the snow is a project created by an architect through the literary device of personification. 

Literary Device: Personification 

Emerson personifies winter as if it were an architect. The creator uses snowflakes as the sketch that glides across the earth. The texture is in the brush strokes; everything is intentional. Emerson shows us that we are witnessing the architect's work by sight at daybreak. Then we peek out of our windows at the beauty before us by such a creator. Even if the view is covered and can look like destruction, we fall into submission by its wonder.  

Love this analysis of The Snow-Storm by Ralph Waldo Emerson? Pin it!

Reflection: 

This poem allows me to reflect on the beauty of winter, remembering it is a transformative time and a chance for us to return inside. We get to work on the parts of us that don’t serve us anymore as much as the parts that do service us. It’s as if we are under construction and being given a chance to play with new designs—using different strokes, colors, and textures. 

Parts of us are supposed to melt away while other parts are reconstructing to grow anew, ready to sprout in time for the rebirth of spring. 

The Snow-Storm 

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 

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 windward 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.