TAKE HEART: A Conversation in Poetry

Edited and Introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate

Today’s reader request from the past of this column comes from Shari Robinson of Steep Falls, who writes: “Longfellow’s ‘Snow-Flakes’ immediately and completely swept me into the magical stillness of a falling snow. I sent the gift to my busy, adult children to give them and my grandchildren a few moments of peace and beauty.”

Snow-Flakes
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Out of the bosom of the Air,
        Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
        Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
                  Silent, and soft, and slow
                  Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
        Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
        In the white countenance confession,
                  The troubled sky reveals
                  The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
        Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
        Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
                  Now whispered and revealed
                  To wood and field.

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the most popular poet America has produced. Widely read in America, his poetry and prose was translated in countries all over the world. He is the only American to be honored with a bust placed in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. This poem is in the public domain.

Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, Special Consultant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at mainepoetlaureate@gmail.com or 207-228-8263. Take Heart: Poems from Maine, an anthology collecting the first two years of this column, is now available from Down East Books.