With every seasonal change we can’t help notice how the light is altered by earthly effects, one reflecting the other. While summer reflects the most light, in winter it reflects the least. Atmospheric phenomena like Halos and Sundogs usually occur in the winter when light is refracted off ice crystals close to the earth’s surface; it’s called diamond dust. Snow shadows and ghostly curvatures often conjure unimaginable creatures, and memories that can emerge in the lines of a poem. Emerson’s poem “The Snow Storm” exemplifies the shadowy appearances snow creates…
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 hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”
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