It sifts from Leaden Sieves –

It sifts from Leaden Sieves –

It powders all the Wood –

It fills with Alabaster Wool

The Wrinkles of the Road –

It scatters like the Birds –

Condenses like a Flock –

Like Juggler’s Figures situates

Upon a baseless Arc –

It traverses yet halts –

Disperses as it stays –

Then curls itself in Capricorn –

Denying that it was –

                                                            F291 (1862)  311

I have been reading lately that figurative language such as similes is old fashioned. Today we go for the straightforward, the direct. Metaphors have also been maligned as overly colorful. Bah. Eliminate figurative language and toss out Shakespeare, the King James, all the famous orators, Greek poets and playwrights, any poets actually, and any scientist or mathematician worth her salt. How else do we understand gravity, for example, without a physicist patiently explaining how it is like a rubber sheet that a bowling ball can distort, dragging other smaller balls towards its warp.

            And so I like the idea of snow as flour sifting from the “Leaden Sieves” that are a wintry sky. I like it as talcum powder touching up the chilly woods, or as white wool smoothed into the rough patches of the road.

Peace after the storm

                        The second stanza compares snow to active figures: imagine a flock of birds in a tree. When startled they scatter in all directions yet then gather again in the air to fly as a flock. The snow will scatter in a breeze but then fall, condensed, in drifts and mounds. But then the poem takes an ominous turn with the image of the “Juggler’s Figures.” We imagine a Juggler blowing and storming snow over the earth just as we are blown and scattered by unknown forces. There is no known “Arc” to this juggling. It is random, unpredictable.

            The unpredictability is carried into the final stanza. The snow travels only to stop. Scatters only to remain. At last the storm “curls itself in Capricorn”—and “Capricorn” here refers to the constellation visible in the northern hemisphere during winter, suggesting the storm innocently curling itself up into its own heavenly resting place as if nothing had ever happened. It’s an interesting movement from a lovely landscape of snow to a metaphor for storm-tossed lives.

Dickinson wrote a longer version of this poem a year or two earlier that has more landscape and less angst. The first stanza is the same but then it completely changes. Speaking of an aversion to figurative language and overly colorful metaphors, I have a hard time visualizing snow as both ruffling the “Wrists of Posts” and the “Ankles of a Queen.” Each by itself is lovely and sufficient. Together we have ruffly snow on wooden wrists and aristocratic ankles. I do, however, like the vision that sees a snow-veiled pastoral field as “Summer’s empty Room.”

Former version:

It sifts from Leaden Sieves –

It powders all the Wood.

It fills with Alabaster Wool

The Wrinkles of the Road –

It makes an Even Face

Of Mountain, and of Plain –

Unbroken Forehead from the East

Unto the East again –

It reaches to the Fence –

It wraps it Rail by Rail

Till it is lost in Fleeces –

It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack – and Stem –

A Summer's empty Room –

Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,

Recordless, but for them–

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts

As Ankles of a Queen –

Then stills its Artisans – like Ghosts –

Denying they have been –