New England Winter Is

The Worst Thing Ever

A Delightful Collection of Winter Woes by

New England’s finest Public Domain Poets

Edited by Meagan Maguire

[canorouscavalcade.tumblr.com] [@MeaganWords]

This hymn was collected in “The Jubilee Heart: A Choice Collection of Psalmody,”

an 1868 hymnal for public worship compiled by the Advent Christian Publication

Society in Boston.

It is found under in the table of contents under the subject “death.”

3. The Snow-Shower – William Cullen Bryant

Above all other American poets, New England poets write a lot about how

“life is pointless.” I blame the Puritan legacy. Puritans saw life as a time of extreme

suffering that (if you were really good) gave way to endless bliss. Enjoy this poem

about how life is pointless.

[“The Examination and Tryal of Father Christmas” by Puritan engraver Josiah King, 1686]

The Snow-Shower

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

Stand here by my side and turn, I pray,

On the lake below, thy gentle eyes;

The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray,

And dark and silent the water lies;

And out of that frozen mist the snow

In wavering flakes begins to flow;

Flake after flake

They sink in the dark and silent lake.

See how in a living swarm they come

From the chambers beyond that misty veil;

Some hover awhile in air, and some

Rush prone from the sky like summer hail.

All, dropping swiftly or settling slow,

Meet, and are still in the depths below;

Flake after flake

Dissolved in the dark and silent lake.

Here delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud,

Come floating downward in airy play,

Like spangles dropped from the glistening

crowd

That whiten by night the milky way;

There broader and burlier masses fall;

The sullen water buries them all–

Flake after flake–

All drowned in the dark and silent lake.

And some, as on tender wings they glide

From their chilly birth-cloud, dim and gray,

Are joined in their fall, and, side by side,

Come clinging along their unsteady way;

As friend with friend, or husband with wife,

Makes hand in hand the passage of life;

Each mated flake

Soon sinks in the dark and silent lake.

Lo! while we are gazing, in swifter haste

Stream down the snows, till the air is white,

As, myriads by myriads madly chased,

They fling themselves from their shadowy

height.

The fair, frail creatures of middle sky,

What speed they make, with their grave so

nigh;

Flake after flake,

To lie in the dark and silent lake!

I see in thy gentle eyes a tear;

They turn to me in sorrowful thought;

Thou thinkest of friends, the good and dear,

Who were for a time, and now are not;

Like these fair children of cloud and frost,

That glisten a moment and then are lost,

Flake after flake–

All lost in the dark and silent lake.

Yet look again, for the clouds divide;

A gleam of blue on the water lies;

And far away, on the mountain-side,

A sunbeam falls from the opening skies,

But the hurrying host that flew between

The cloud and the water, no more is seen;

Flake after flake,

At rest in the dark and silent lake.

A W i n t e r P i e c e – W i l l i a m C u l l e n B r y a n t

But Winter has yet brighter scenes—he boasts

Splendors beyond what gorgeous Summer knows;

Or Autumn with his many fruits, and woods

All flushed with many hues. Come when the rains

Have glazed the snow and clothed the trees with ice,

While the slant of sun of February pours

Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach!

The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps,

And the broad arching portals of the grove

Welcome thy entering. Look! the massy trunks

Are cased in pure crystal; each light spray,

Nodding and tinkling in the breath of heaven,

Is studded with its trembling water-drops,

That glimmer with an amethystine light.

4. After great pain, a formal feeling comes (372) – Emily Dickinson

5. There’s a certain Slant of light (320) – Emily Dickinson

If I was to ask someone on the street “name a stuffy boring poet everyone is forced to read”

a lot of people would say Emily Dickinson. But hold your horses, she’s actually super cool. A

lot of her poems are kind of proto-goth pieces about dying and suffering and BDSM and how

there is no god. Plus she can rig up a rhythm like no one else.

Also, a lot of people make fun of Emily Dickinson for being a weird shut in. But honestly

chillin’ in your house not working and doing what you love all day seems pretty ideal.

I find it’s best to just read her poems and let the imagery create an atmosphere. Then go

back later and worry about close reading.

Flooding in Turner, ME along the Androscoggin River, 1896

After great pain, a formal feeling comes – (372)

Emily Dickinson

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –

The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’

And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –

A Wooden way

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –

Regardless grown,

A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –

First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

There's a certain Slant of light - (320)

Emily Dickinson

There's a certain Slant of light,

Winter Afternoons –

That oppresses, like the Heft

Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –

We can find no scar,

But internal difference –

Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any –

'Tis the seal Despair –

An imperial affliction

Sent us of the Air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens –

Shadows – hold their breath –

When it goes, 'tis like the Distance

On the look of Death –

6. Good-bye, And Stay Cold – Robert Frost

Robert Frost also gets a bad rap. Yes, some of his poems easily could be from a

Hallmark card sent by your grandma, but most of them are pretty great. *the road

not taken cough*

Poetically, Frost bridges the gap between 19th romanticism and 20th century

modernism in an interesting way. What I like most about him is you can read him

very casually and just enjoy the little scenes, or you can get insight into the human

condition. His poetry is both comforting and challenging.

He gets a bonus for having a sick New England accent. He sounds a lot like my

grandpa.

Loggers at Russell Camp on Moosehead Lake, early 1900s

Good-bye, and Keep Cold

Robert Frost

This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark

And cold to an orchard so young in the bark

Reminds me of all that can happen to harm

An orchard away at the end of the farm

All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.

I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,

I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse

By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse.

(If certain it wouldn't be idle to call

I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall

And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)

I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun.

(We made it secure against being, I hope,

By setting it out on a northerly slope.)

No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;

But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.

"How often already you've had to be told,

Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.

Dread fifty above more than fifty below."

I have to be gone for a season or so.

My business awhile is with different trees,

Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,

And such as is done to their wood with an axe—

Maples and birches and tamaracks.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night

And think of an orchard's arboreal plight

When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)

Its heart sinks lower under the sod.

But something has to be left to God.

7. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Aftermath

8. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – The Cross of Snow

You might know Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as the guy whose statue the

Portland city government inexplicably dresses up with scarves and presents and

crap every December.

If you grew up in Maine, you might know him from reading Evangeline in 4th grade.

Wow, I got so freaked out by that poem. I totally thought the British coming and

deporting you was AN ACTUAL THREAT you had to worry about. Any day some

Redcoats may burst into your house and BAM off to Louisiana with you.

Anyway, he was from Maine and he was super famous during his life. His poems

didn’t age that well (some of them are really flowery) but he many of his poems are

awesome. Like these…

Harvesting in Thorndike, ME c. 1915

A f t e r m a t h

H e n r y W a d s w o r t h L o n g f e l l o w

When the summer fields are mown,

When the birds are fledged and flown,

And the dry leaves strew the path;

With the falling of the snow,

With the cawing of the crow,

Once again the fields we mow

And gather in the aftermath.

Not the sweet, new grass with flowers

Is this harvesting of ours;

Not the upland clover bloom;

But the rowen mixed with weeds,

Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,

Where the poppy drops its seeds

In the silence and the gloom.

The Cross of Snow

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,

A gentle face — the face of one long dead —

Looks at me from the wall, where round its head

The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.

Here in this room she died; and soul more white

Never through martyrdom of fire was led

To its repose; nor can in books be read

The legend of a life more benedight.

There is a mountain in the distant West

That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines

Displays a cross of snow upon its side.

Such is the cross I wear upon my breast

These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes

And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

9. Edna St. Vincent Millay – Dirge Without Music

10. Edna St. Vincent Millay – This Dusky Faith

Probably three times during primary & elementary school I had to do a report on a

famous person from Maine. I always chose Edna St. Vincent Millay. She was

unequivocally a badass flapper and probably the coolest person named “Edna” who

ever lived.

She is also important because of her erasure. During her life she was a formidable

figure in American literature. After her death she was slowly swept aside. Her work

was dismissed as fluffy and sentimental. She is not the first woman poet the world

has tried to forget, but the attack on her legacy has been especially vicious.

P.S. The background photo was from a meeting at the Turner Grange Hall c. 1910.

Many years later I would watch queer slam poetry and puppet shows about safe and

healthy BDSM from that very stage. Oh how the times have changed.

Dirge Without Music

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.

Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,

A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—

They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled

Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

THIS DUSKY FAITH EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

Why, then, weep not, Since naught's to weep.

Too wild, too hot For a dead thing, Altered and cold, Are these long tears: Relinquishing To the sovereign force Of the pulling past What you cannot hold Is reason's course.

Wherefore, sleep.

Or sleep to the rocking Rather, of this: The silver knocking Of the moon's knuckles At the door of the night; Death here becomes Being, nor truckles To the sun, assumes Light as its right.

So, too, this dusky faith In Man, transcends its death, Shines out, gains emphasis; Shorn of the tangled past, Shows its fine skill at last, Cold, lovely satellite.

11. Henry David Thoreau – The Moon Now Rises to Her Absolute Rule

The Daily Show’s own John Hodgman described Henry David Thoreau as a

“Concordian school teacher and neck-bearded misanthrope and, occasionally

Emerson’s gardener.”

To be fair, his portrait is the earliest extant evidence of “the neckbeard” and a

VERY devoted one at that.

Some say if you stare at this photo for 30 seconds and repeat “libertarian” to

yourself three times Ron Paul will appear in your room and grant you 1,000 bitcoins.

This poem is super chill tho.

The moon now rises to her absolute rule

The moon now rises to her absolute rule,

And the husbandman and hunter

Acknowledge her for their mistress.

Asters and golden reign in the fields

And the life everlasting withers not.

The fields are reaped and shorn of their pride

But an inward verdure still crowns them;

The thistle scatters its down on the pool

And yellow leaves clothe the river—

And nought disturbs the serious life of men.

But behind the sheaves and under the sod

There lurks a ripe fruit which the reapers have not gathered,

The true harvest of the year—the boreal fruit

Which it bears forever,

With fondness annually watering and maturing it.

But man never severs the stalk

Which bears this palatable fruit.

12. Frederick Goddard Tuckerman – Under the Mountain

Alright straight up, Nathaniel Hawthorne was a very chill dude. Not only did he

write America’s most famous Satanic short story (Young Goodman Brown) he also

supported other artists whose work was not appreciated in their time, but were

later recognized as utterly brilliant. For example, Herman Melville and Frederick

Goddard Tuckerman.

Ole Freddie published only one book of poems in his life. All sonnets. No one liked it.

Except Hawthorne. It was only until way later that people realized the “unmusical”

verse of this quiet, shy man foreshadowed the poetic revolutions of the 20th century.

"Under the mountain..." – Frederick Goddard Tucker

Under the mountain, as when first I knew

Its low dark roof, and chimney creeper-twined,

The red house stands; and yet my footsteps find

Vague in the walks, waste balm and fever few.

But they are gone: no soft-eyed sisters trip

Across the porch or lintels; where, behind,

The mother sat,--sat knitting with pursed lip.

The house stands vacant in its green recess,

Absent of beauty as a broken heart;

The wild rain enters, and the sunset wind

Sighs in the chambers of their loveliness,

Or shakes the pane; and in the silent noons,

The glass falls from the window, part by part,

And ringeth faintly in the grassy stones.

13. Jones Very – That Clouded Morning

Things Jonas Very Did

1. Befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. Became a well-respected poet and thinker

3. Attended Harvard

4. Became town preacher in Eastport, Me.

5. Went insane, thought he was Jesus

6. Lectured other asylum-mates about Shakespeare

The Clouded Morning /// Jonas Very

The morning comes, and thickening clouds prevail,

Hanging like curtains all the horizon round,

Or overhead in heavy stillness sail;

So still is day, it seems like night profound;

Scarce by the city’s din the air is stirred,

And dull and deadened comes its every sound;

The cock’s shrill, piercing voice subdued is heard,

By the thick folds of muffling vapors drowned.

Dissolved in mists the hills and trees appear,

Their outlines lost and blended with the sky;

And well-known objects, that to all are near,

No longer seem familiar to the eye,

But with fantastic forms they mock the sight,

As when we grope amid the gloom of night.