Poem of the Day: ‘To a Wreath of Snow’

Last winter, as a Poem of the Day, the Sun offered “Spellbound” by Emily Brontë (1818–1848). It’s a grim poem about winter on the Yorkshire moors and the sense of being caught: “a tyrant spell has bound me / And I cannot, cannot go.”Today’s poem offers a different view of winter. In “To a Wreath of Snow,” Brontë begins with something similar to her thoughts in “Spellbound”: “morning rose in mourning grey / And faintly lit my prison room.” But there’s a difference in what happens next, for on one of those gray mornings, she rises to find that snow had fallen: “angel like, when I awoke.” And the message of the moors is changed: “voiceless, soulless, messenger / Thy presence waked a thrilling tone / That comforts me while thou art here / And will sustain when thou art gone.”In seven tetrameter quatrains, rhymed abab, “To a Wreath of Snow” reverses a poem such as “Moonlight, Summer Moonlight” (another of Emily Brontë’s, Poem of the Day last summer). Where that poem shows a beautiful, romantic landscape that suddenly reveals a beautiful, romantic corpse, “To a Wreath of Snow” gives us the landscape as an iron-hearted prison — even satanic, with hands that have a “rebel task,” like the fallen angels — that is overcome in beauty and meaning by the “frail” snow.To a Wreath of Snowby Emily BrontëO transient voyager of heaven! O silent sign of winter skies!What adverse wind thy sail has driven To dungeons where a prisoner lies?Methinks the hands that shut the sun So sternly from this morning’s browMight still their rebel task have done And checked a thing so frail as thou.They would have done it had they known The talisman that dwelt in thee,For all the suns that ever shone Have never been so kind to me!For many a week, and many a day My heart was weighed with sinking gloomWhen morning rose in mourning grey And faintly lit my prison roomBut angel like, when I awoke, Thy silvery form so soft and fairShining through darkness, sweetly spoke Of cloudy skies and mountains bare;The dearest to a mountaineer Who, all life long has loved the snowThat crowned her native summits drear, Better, than greenest plains below.And voiceless, soulless, messenger Thy presence waked a thrilling toneThat comforts me while thou art here And will sustain when thou art gone___________________________________________With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

Poem of the Day: ‘To a Wreath of Snow’

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