or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work 15
So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swanlike form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, 20
Mauger the farmer's sighs; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work;
And when his hours are numbered and the world
Is all his own, retiring as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art 5
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night work--
The frolic architecture of the snow.

1. The first stanza describes the effect of the
storm on people. Who are some of those
inconvenienced?

2. In the remainder of the poem, the storm is
thought of as an architect. What words describe him
and his work? Why is he "myriad-handed?" Explain
windward; mauger; "Parian wreaths." Why is the
storm said to use the last mockingly? What other
fanciful or mischievous things does the storm do?

3. Express in your own words the idea in lines 3-8,
page 195. Compare the work of human builders with
the work of the storm.

4. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American
essayist, poet, and philosopher. He lived at
Concord, Massachusetts.

SNOW-BOUND

BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky 5
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out-- 10

A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, midvein, the circling race
Of lifeblood in the sharpened face--
The coming of the snowstorm told.
The wind blew east; we heard the roar 5
Of ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.

Meanwhile we did our