Snow is so much more than a type of precipitation in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds, but complicates and blesses our lives in a number of ways, giving rise to both frustration and romance.
- When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town.
- But pleasures are like poppies spread—
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river—
A moment white—then melts forever.
- Robert Burns, Tam o' Shanter (1790) Line 59
- The Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow.
- The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
- If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes
Will keep my talk from getting overwise,
I'm not the one for putting off the proof.
Let it be overwhelming, off a roof
And round a corner, blizzard snow for dust,
And blind me to a standstill if it must.
- But he sent her Good-by,
And said to be good,
And wear her red hood,
And look for skunk tracks
In the snow with an ax —
And do everything!
- Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
- Then, on the silence of the snows there lay
A Sabbath's quiet sunshine,—and its bell
Filled the hushed air awhile, with lonely sway;
For the stream's voice was chained by Winter's spell,
The deep wood-sounds had ceased.
- Felicia Hemans, The League of the Alps, or the Meeting on the Field of Grütli (1826)
- 琴詩酒友皆抛我 雪月花時最憶君
- Friends on pipa, poetry and drinking, all of them cast me away. When I see the snow, the moon or blossoms, I long for you deeply.
- Bai Juyi (772 - 846),「寄殷律協」.
- ...the wind had dropped, and the snow, tired of rushing around in circles trying to catch itself up, now fluttered gently down until it found a place on which to rest, and sometimes the place was Pooh's nose and sometimes it wasn't and in a little while Piglet was wearing a white muffler round his neck and feeling more snowy behind the ears than he had ever felt before.
- In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
- Christina Rossetti, Mid-Winter (1872), st. 1.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
- Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 723.
- Lo, sifted through the winds that blow,
Down comes the soft and silent snow,
White petals from the flowers that grow
In the cold atmosphere.
- George W. Bungay, The Artists of the Air.
- Through the sharp air a flaky torrent flies,
Mocks the slow sight, and hides the gloomy skies;
The fleecy clouds their chilly bosoms bare,
And shed their substance on the floating air.
- George Crabbe, Inebriety.
- Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Snow-Storm.
- Come, see the north-wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he
For number or proportion.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Snow-Storm.
- 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.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Snow-Flakes.
- Where's the snow
That fell the year that's fled—where's the snow?
- Samuel Lover, The Snow.
- Notre Dame des Neiges.
- Our Lady of the Snows.
- Emile Nelligan, title of a poem.
- Sancta Maria ad Nives.
- Name of the basilica dedicated to Our Lady, now known as Santa Maria Maggiora. Many Catholic churches so called after the famous legend.
- As I saw fair Chloris walk alone,
The feather'd snow came softly down,
As Jove, descending from his tow'r
To court her in a silver show'r.
The wanton snow flew to her breast,
As little birds into their nest;
But o'ercome with whiteness there,
For grief dissolv'd into a tear.
Thence falling on her garment hem,
To deck her, froze into a gem.
- On Chloris walking in the Snow. In Wit's Recreations. J. C. Hotten's reprint, p. 308. (1640).
- Mais où sont les neiges d'antan? C'estoit le plus grand soucy qu'eust Villon, le poëte parisien.
- But where are the snows of last year? That was the greatest concern of Villon, the Parisian poet.
- François Rabelais, Pantagruel (1532), Chapter XIV.
- A little snow, tumbled about, anon becomes a mountain.
- O that I were a mockery king of snow,
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water drops!
- For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.
- Lawn as white as driven snow.
- Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?
- But where are the snows of yester year?
- François Villon, Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis.
- O the snow, the beautiful snow,
Filling the sky and earth below;
Over the house-tops, over the street,
Over the heads of the people you meet,
Dancing, flirting, skimming along.
- James W. Watson, Beautiful Snow.