Thursday, December 19, 2013

THE SNOW MAN by Wallace Stevens








         THE  SNOW  MAN


by Wallace Stevens

   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.