Snowy Coverings

Moscow Smolensky Boulevard Study   Wassily Kandinsky

 Feathery Snow

by Annette Wynne
Feathery snow, floating all day 

Down on the heads of the children at play, 

Coming first slowly, then thickly and fast,
As if the snowing would never be past;
Creeping on curls and blouses and faces.
Filling the chinks in all sorts of places,
Freezing the poor bird with no place to go.
Are you not sorry, O feathery snow? 

Feathery snow, floating all night, 

Aren't you happy again for the light? 

All through the dark you were falling and creeping, 

While little children were safe in bed sleeping; 

But where is the poor bird with no place to go? 

Did you not pity him shivering so? 

Where did he hide him, O feathery snow?

Winter Wilds

Figures in a Winter Landscape  Frederik Marinus Kruseman

Bilbo's Song of Winter
by J.R.R. Tolkien
When winter first begins to bite
and stones crack in the frosty night,
when pools are black and trees are bare,
'tis evil in the Wild to fare.

Winter Resignations

Winter Landscape  Caspar David Friedrich

Winter: A Dirge

by Robert Burns

The wintry west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;
Or the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw:
While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
And roars frae bank to brae;
And bird and beast in covert rest,
And pass the heartless day.

“The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,”
The joyless winter day
Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May:
The tempest’s howl, it soothes my soul,
My griefs it seems to join;
The leafless trees my fancy please,
Their fate resembles mine!

Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme
These woes of mine fulfil,
Here firm I rest; they must be best,
Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want—O do Thou grant
This one request of mine!—
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,
Assist me to resign.

Skating Lessons

Learning to Skate

by Emilie Blackmore Stapp

When brother teaches her to skate,

They never stay out very late,

But, oh, it is such fun!

With sister holding fast one hand, 

She feels grown-up and much too grand,

To want to skip or run.

She tells them both that she thinks they

Should hurry home from school each day,--

For it gets dark so soon--

And take her to the meadow pond,

Or to the river just beyond,

To skate each afternoon.

Her skating lessons are a game,

That you might call by any name--

In frostly winter air,

The wind gives her a little ride

With brother laughing at her side,

The Ice King everywhere!

Jack Frost

Frosted Windows  Charles Buchfield

Jack Frost

by Gabriel Setoun

The door was shut, as doors should be, 

Before you went to bed last night; 

Yet Jack Frost has got in, you see, 

And left your window silver white. 

He must have waited till you slept; 

And not a single word he spoke, 

But pencilled o’er the panes and crept 

Away again before you woke.

And now you cannot see the hills 

Nor fields that stretch beyond the lane; 

But there are fairer things than these 

His fingers traced on every pane. 

Rocks and castles towering high; 

Hills and dales, and streams and fields; 

And knights in armor riding by, 

With nodding plumes and shining shields. 

And here are little boats, and there 

Big ships with sails spread to the breeze; 

And yonder, palm trees waving fair 

On islands set in silver seas, 

And butterflies with gauzy wings; 

And herds of cows and flocks of sheep; 

And fruit and flowers and all the things 

You see when you are sound asleep. 

For, creeping softly underneath 

The door when all the lights are out, 

Jack Frost takes every breath you breathe, 

And knows the things you think about. 

He paints them on the window-pane 

In fairy lines with frozen steam; 

And when you wake you see again 

The lovely things you saw in dream.

Earthsleep

Winter Magpie  Claude Monet

from Lines: The Cold Earth Slept Below

By Percy Byssche Shelley

The cold earth slept below;

Above the cold sky shone;

And all around,

With a chilling sound,

From caves of ice and fields of snow

The breath of night like death did flow

Beneath the sinking moon.

The wintry hedge was black;

The green grass was not seen;

The birds did rest

On the bare thorn’s breast,

Whose roots, beside the pathway track,

Had bound their folds o’er many a crack

Which the frost had made between.

Mood Change

from Winter Album  Imao Keinen  

Dust of Snow

By Robert Frost

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued

Folly

Love in an Italian Theater  Jean Antoine Watteau

Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind 

by William Shakespeare 

from As You Like It

Blow, blow, thou winter wind

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:

Most freindship if feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky,

That does not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As a friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:

Most freindship if feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

Winter's Song

Village at Winter at Midnight  Jacob van Ruisdael

"Be Off!"

 by Victor Hugo

"Be off!" say Winter's snows;

"Now it's my turn to sing!"

So, startled, quivering,

Not daring to oppose

(Our fortitude grows dim in

The face of a Quos ego),

Away, my songs, must we go

Before those virile women!

Rain. We are forced to fly,

Everywhere, utterly.

End of the comedy.

Come, swallows, it's good-bye.

Wind, sleet. The branches sway,

Writhing their stunted limbs,

And off the white smoke swims

Across the heavens' gray.

A pallid yellow lingers

Over the chilly dale.

My keyhole blows a gale

Onto my frozen fingers.

Winter's Pull

A Snowy Landscape  Cuno Amiet

Spellbound

by Emily Brontë

The night is darkening round me,

The wild winds coldly blow;

But a tyrant spell has bound me

And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending

Their bare boughs weighed with snow.

And the storm is fast descending,

And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,

Wastes beyond wastes below;

But nothing dear can move me;

I will not, cannot go.

Wintertime Noises

An Old Man's Winter Night 

by Robert Frost

All out of doors looked darkly in at him

Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,

That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.

What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze

Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.

What kept him from remembering what it was

That brought him to that creaking room was age.

He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.

And having scared the cellar under him

In clomping there, he scared it once again

In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,

Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar

Of trees and crack of branches, common things,

But nothing so like beating on a box.

A light he was to no one but himself

Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,

A quiet light, and then not even that.

He consigned to the moon, such as she was,

So late-arising, to the broken moon

As better than the sun in any case

For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,

His icicles along the wall to keep;

And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt

Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,

And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.

One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,

A farm, a countryside, or if he can,

It's thus he does it of a winter night.

A Wee Bit o' Scotland in the Winter

A Flock of Sheep in a Snowstorm  Joseph Farquharson

A Winter Night

by Robert Burns

When biting Boreas, fell and doure,

Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r;

When Phoebus gies a short-liv'd glow'r,

Far south the lift,

Dim-dark'ning thro' the flaky show'r,

Or whirling drift:

Ae night the storm the steeples rocked,

Poor Labour sweet in sleep was locked,

While burns, wi' snawy wreeths upchoked,

Wild-eddying swirl,

Or thro' the mining outlet bocked,

Down headlong hurl.

List'ning, the doors an' winnocks rattle,

I thought me on the ourie cattle,

Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle

O' winter war,

And thro' the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle,

Beneath a scar.

Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing!

That, in the merry months o' spring,

Delighted me to hear thee sing,

What comes o' thee?

Whare wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing

An' close thy e'e?

Ev'n you on murd'ring errands toil'd,

Lone from your savage homes exil'd,

The blood-stain'd roost, and sheep-cote spoil'd

My heart forgets,

While pityless the tempest wild

Sore on you beats.

Winter Nights

Two Venitian Ladies  Vittore Carpaccio

Now Winter Nights Enlarge

by Thomas Campion

Now winter nights enlarge 

This number of their hours; 

And clouds their storms discharge 

Upon the airy towers.

Let now the chimneys blaze 

And cups o'erflow with wine, 

Let well-tuned words amaze 

With harmony divine... 

This time doth well dispense 

With lovers' long discourse; 

Much speech hath some defense, 

Though beauty no remorse. 

All do not all things well:

Some measures comely tread, 

Some knotted riddles tell, 

Some poems smoothly read. 

The summer hath his joys, 

And winter his delights; 

Though love and all his pleasures are but toys 

 They shorten tedious nights.

Sleigh Ride

Central Park Winter Skating Pond    Currier and Ives

The First Sleigh-Ride

by Evaleen Stein

O happy time of fleecy rime 

And falling flakes, and O 

The glad surprise in baby eyes 

That never saw the snow!

Down shining ways the flying sleighs 

Go jingling by, and see! 

Beside the gate the horses wait 

And neigh for you and me!

Snowdrift   Frederick Judd Waugh

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening

by 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.

Winter in the City

Snow in New York   Robert Henri

Winter

                             by Dorothy Aldis

The street cars are

Like frosted cakes --

All covered up

With cold snowflakes.

The horses' hoofs

Scrunch on the street;

Their eyelashes

Are white with sleet.

And everywhere

The people go --

With faces tickled

By the snow.

Snowstorm

The Snowstorm  Francisco DeGoya

It sifts from Leaden Sieves

by Emily Dickinson

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 —

It reaches to the Fence —

It wraps it Rail by Rail

Till it is lost in Fleeces —

It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack - and Stem —

A Summer’s empty Room —

Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,

Recordless, but for them —

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts

As Ankles of a Queen —

Then stills its Artisans — like Ghosts —

Denying they have been —