Snow.

I took this picture of the camellia bush outside my window today as the snow began -- here in Georgia on this Valentine/President's day weekend.

It made me think of a poem that I taught for many years to my students, who sat with their eyes over-glazed, their stares blank, as I talked about the loveliness of this poem -- how Emerson captured the wonder of God.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I threw the pearls before swine -- it was my job -- -----

now as I reread this poem in the quiet of my house, all shutters open to the snow, I love it even more. I am "enclosed in a tumultuous privacy of [snow]."

The Snow Storm

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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 hill 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
Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of 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, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hiddden thorn;
Fills up the famer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre 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
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

Blog Readers: Eh. I like it better when she makes fun of her family.

Former students: Man, who uses a word like "maugre" anyway? Emerson? Never heard of him -- and yo, Gillham? I did not stare.