For Love of Poetry

From my mother, to me, to you

There is a collection of books I treasure, ten volumes of The Junior Classics, The Young Folks’ Shelf Of Books. Each volume is covered in a different color and features a variety of subjects, Fairy Tales, Heroes, Adventure, History, etc. But my favorite volume is number ten, with its worn orange cover and well-loved pages. This one has the poetry.

Mother had these books as a child, as they are copyright 1938 and she is circa 1936. This tenth volume was carried by her youngest brother, Butchie, to The Houston School in Mt. Airy in Philadelphia. I know this because that’s what’s written in my grandmother’s hand in pencil inside the cover. 

When I was small my mother read to us from this book, everything from nursery rhymes and funny verses to The Ride Of Paul Revere, O Captain, My Captain, and Nancy Hanks. Mother loves poetry and some favorites she wrote out longhand in her beautiful handwriting. 

One selection is preserved perfectly, having been folded and tucked between the pages of this volume. The First Snowfall by James Russell Lowell deals with winter, death and loss. I share it with you here today, including my own reading of the poem from Mother’s handwritten page.

I don’t feel the need to write an analysis, the poem can stand alone and speak for itself. The theme is truly a musing on mortality, and my love for the poem and for my mother are comment enough. 

The snow had begun in the gloaming, and busily all the night

Had been heaping field and highway with a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock wore ermine too dear for an Earl,

And the poorest twig in the elm tree was ridged inch deep in pearl.

From sheds new-roofed with carrara came chanticleer’s muffled crow

The stiff rails softened to swan’s down and still fluttered down the snow.

As I stood and watched by the window the noiseless work of the sky,

The sudden flurry of snow birds like brown leaves whirling by, 

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn where a little headstone stood

How the flakes were folding it gently as did Robin the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel, saying “Father, who makes it snow?”

And I told of the good all-Father who cares for us here below.

Then with eyes that saw not, I kissed her, and she kissing back could not know

That my kiss was given to her sister, folded close under deepening snow.