Taken at 6:30 a.m. March 2, 2012 by Margaret Buffie

"The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white." 

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), U.S. poet. 'The First Snowfall'

In our case, after a long winter, it is not our first snowfall,

but the snow worked busily all night and heaped on field and highway.  March is coming in like a lion in Manitoba!

Photo by Margaret Buffie - "Snow Flower Cave"

 

February

O Master-Builder, blustering as you go
About your giant work, transforming all
The empty woods into a glittering hall,
And making lilac lanes and footpaths grow
As hard as iron under stubborn snow,
Though every fence stand forth a marble wall,
And windy hollows drift that shall your might o’erthrow.
Build high your white and dazzling palaces,
Strengthen your bridges, fortify your towers,
Storm with a loud and portentous lip;
And April with a fragmentary breeze,
And half a score of gentle, golden hours,
Shall leave no trace of your stern workmanship.

1910

Early Canadian Poet



AGNES ETHELWYN WETHERALD (1857-1940)

The first decade of the twentieth century was A. E. Wetherald's most productive, and saw the publications of three books of poetry. A review of The Last Robin: Lyrics and Sonnets (1907) in The Globe said, “The salient quality of Miss Wetherald’s work is its freshness of feeling, a perennial freshness, renewable as spring. This has a setting of harmonious form, for the poet's ear is delicately attuned to the value of words, both as to the sound and the meaning.”

Thanks to Keryn Huenemann for introducing Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald to me on the blog "Canada's Early Women Writers"  http://ceww.wordpress.com/ , and to this poem for my February blues!!