Snow-Bound and Other Poems by John Greenleaf Whittier


Snow-Bound and Other Poems
Title : Snow-Bound and Other Poems
Author :
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ISBN : -
Format Type : Hardcover
Number of Pages : 288
Publication : First published January 1, 1921

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Snow-Bound and Other Poems Reviews

  • Timons Esaias

    I've been reading the Riverside Literature Series (which I collect) poetry volumes the last year or so, and am now nibbling my way through in numerical order. Whittier's Snow-Bound and Other Poems is #4 in the series (two of the previous volumes are poetry, the other is a play made from a poem). I can see why.

    I've been having very mixed reactions to these old collections. Some authors (Tennyson, Longfellow) wear better than I would have guessed, while others (Dryden, Keats, Rittenhouse's The Little Book of Modern Verse) most definitely haven't. I vaguely remember "liking some Whittier" in historical context, but I was expecting to be bored.

    Well, yes, the pace is slow, and the subject matter not terribly dramatic. The title poem tells us what it was like to be snowed in for a week on an isolated farm in Massachusetts in the 1810s; the "Songs of Labor" describe the work of shoemakers, fishermen, lumbermen, ship-builders, drovers, huskers, and corn harvesters; "The Barefoot Boy" well, the title covers it. But they quietly sparkle. I have been on a farm in a blizzard, and parts of this haven't changed, except that it's tractors and snowplows, not oxen, who join the parade to break out the road. He just does a good job bringing it all to life.

    That Harriet Livermore was one of the characters referred to in "Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl" is just icing on the cake.

    I had forgotten "Telling the Bees" and the ritual it describes. And the event it remembers. Ah.

    "The Barefoot Boy" reminded me of several of the essays of John Burroughs and also some remarks by Dallas Lore Sharp. These naturalists had a standard method for assessing the birds and other natural phenomenon in any newly visited area: they asked the local boys. The boys invariably knew where all the nests were, where the burrows were, where the interesting trees were. Burroughs found it worked in rural England just the same.

    I wonder how true that would be today?

    Anyway, as Lowell said of Whittier way back when, he memorializes a time in our history; I see these poems as equivalent to Eric Sloane's books. Recommended.