Two New England Farmers--A Brief Conversation

One comments. . .

As I  "mushed" on into a little clearing, walking towards the sun, I had a glimpse of a winter effect I always like to see.  On the tops of the trees the wind was blowing, and just ahead of me there suddenly fell from a hemlock branch a quantity of snow which disintegrated to powder in the sunlit air.  As it thus dissolved, the snow dust turned to a mist of rainbow brilliance, a certain coppery, bronzy glow seeming to hang for a moment against the sun.  



The other replies . . .

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.




The paragraph is from Henry Beston's Northern Farm:  A Chronicle of Maine, and the poem is by Robert Frost, "Dust of Snow."


I don't know if they ever met, but I think they would have gotten along very nicely.

Robert Frost: "Dust of Snow"

This is a short poem by Robert Frost, but it speaks of something important--the way small or seemingly inconsequential events can affect us even though the event itself has really nothing in common with its effect.  Why does this affect the narrator the way it does?

Dust of Snow

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.  


I think Frost's genius is in his ability to see the little things that are of real consequence though few of us see them at the time.  His poetry isolates those moments, those events, and shows us what we have missed.   

Perhaps next time we may be more observant.