oint out the nest.

At what time of the year does the little girl's birthday come?

_The First Snowfall_

(Volume II, page 403)

A. _The Author._ For a sketch of the life of James Russell Lowell, see
Volume VII, page 411.

B. _The Meaning._ Words and Phrases:

"Gloaming"; early evening.

"Silence." The snow is called a silence, because it hushes noise, or
prevents it.

"Pine and fir and hemlock"; three evergreen trees.

"Ermine"; the fur from a northern animal of the same name. It is very
soft and white. Earls, nobles of rank, wore ermine on their robes to
show their high birth.

"Pearl"; a white, lustrous jewel, or the beautiful lining of some sea
shells.

"Carrara"; a town in Italy, whence comes the finest white marble. Here
Carrara means _costly marble_.

"Swan's down." Swans have fine soft down between their feathers. It
protects them from cold in winter, and in summer they line their nests
with it.

"Noiseless work"; covering everything with snow.

"Mound"; grave.

"Auburn"; a beautiful cemetery near Boston.

"Babes in the Wood"; an allusion to the old story of the children who
were lost in the woods, and whom the robins covered with leaves to
protect them.

"All-father"; God, the Father of all.

"Leaden"; gray and heavy, lead-colored.

"Arched"; curved.

"Deep-plunged woe"; a sorrow that plunged us deep in misery.

"Eyes that saw not." His eyes were so filled with tears that he could
not see "Mabel," who is really his daughter Rose.

"_My_ kiss was given to her sister." He was thinking so deeply of his
lost daughter, that it seemed almost as though he kissed the dead lips.

"Folded close." The soft, downy snow made him think of a soft, warm
covering for the form of his little one.

C. _Form and Structure._

There are ten stanzas of four verses (lines) each, with the rhymes at
the ends of the second and fourth verses only. The word _snow_ is used
four times in rhymes; the words rhyming with it are _crow_, _below_,
_woe_ and _know_. All the rhymes in the poem are perfect.

The meter is varied iambic trimeter. The first and third lines of each
stanza have an added unaccented syllable, while the second and fourth
have just three full feet. Anapestic feet are used freely to improve the
music; in fact, they are nearly as numerous as the iambic feet.

The scansion of the first stanza may be indicated thus:

The-snow'|had-be-gun'|in-the-gloam'|ing
And-bus'|i-ly-all'|the-nig