One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Analysis, meaning and summary of Wallace Stevens's poem The Snow Man

4 Comments

  1. tluanga says:

    Following the propaganda formerly laid by Karl Marx, Ginsberg and Jack Ker-ouac were struggling to attain freedom of a kind; from the reading of the poem, one connives the fact that the poet did belong to the Beat generation and so did he protested against the contemporary mundane societal doctrines.

  2. Anna Sung says:

    George bush commented on this poem? I highly doubt it -.-

  3. Edard Etsten says:

    Just a notte: I have been living with this simple poem for close to a decade and each day it becomes more complicated andf rewarding. If there might be only one poem on a desert island one could not have a better.

  4. George W. Bush says:

    This poem reflects my remorse about everything that I screwed up in during my Presidential term. It’s a good poem.

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