StoryTitle("caps", "The First Snow Fall") ?>
PoemStart() ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "The snow had begun in the gloaming,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "And busily all the night", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Had been heaping field and highway ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "With a silence deep and white.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Every pine and fir and hemlock ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Wore ermine too dear for an earl, ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And the poorest twig on the elm tree ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Was ridged inch deep with pearl.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "From sheds new-roofed with Carrara", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "The stiff rails softened to swan's-down ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "And still fluttered down the snow.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "I stood and watched by the window ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "The noiseless work of the sky", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And the sudden flurry of snow birds, ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Like brown leaves whirling by.", "") ?>
PagePoem(46, "L0", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Where a little headstone stood; ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "How the flakes were folding it gently, ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "As did robins the babes in the wood.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Up spoke our own little Mabel", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Saying, \"Father, who makes the snow?\" ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And I told of the good All-father ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Who cares for us here below.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Again I looked at the snowfall, ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "And thought of the leaden sky ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "That arched o'er our first great sorrow, ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "When that mound was heaped so high.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "I remembered the gradual patience ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "That fell from that cloud like snow, ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Flake by flake, healing and hiding ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "The scar that renewed our woe.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And again to the child I whispered, ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2DQ", "", "\"The snow that husheth all, ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Darling, the merciful Father ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Alone can make it fall!\"", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her, ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "And she, kissing back, could not know ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "That my kiss was given to her sister, ", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Folded close under deepening snow.", "") ?>
PoemAttribution("85", SmallCapsText("—James Russell Lowell.")) ?>
PoemEnd() ?>