Thinking About Winter When It's Ninety Degrees by Susan Van Kirk

 

One hundred thirty-one years ago, the author of one of my favorite poems passed away at the age of eighty-four in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, but the places he was most associated with were Haverhill and Amesbury, Massachusetts. Known as the Quaker Poet and one of the Fireside Poets, his name was John Greenleaf Whittier. Each year I read his poem, “Snow-Bound” when I am snowbound in small-town Illinois.

His family had few earthly goods, but his poem described their close-knit bonds. Born December 17, 1807, Whittier had two sisters and one brother who grew up together on a farm that produced little. To attend Haverhill Academy, he worked as a shoemaker, and his family donated food to the school. He finished high school in two years.

Whittier gained a following for his political and anti-slavery work. His friendship with William Lloyd Garrison and his Quaker virtues of social responsibility, humanitarianism, and compassion turned him into one of the founding members of the American Anti-Slavery Society. He considered two of his signature decisions—signing the 1833 Anti-Slavery Declaration and being a Massachusetts presidential elector for Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and 1864—the culmination of his values and beliefs. Once the Thirteenth Amendment passed, he returned to his poetry.

“Snow-Bound,” published in 1866, secured his lasting reputation as a poet of the first order. The day of its release, it sold 7,000 copies. He made ten cents a copy. The first edition garnered him $10,000, a huge royalty for poets in the 1800s.

In the last half of the 19^th century, Whittier joined with other well-known poets of his time in a group that wrote of universal themes that families could read around the fireplace. Known as the Fireside Poets, the group included Whittier, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, a revered group indeed.

I love “Snow-Bound” because it’s such an ode to nostalgia. Whittier was describing a rural way of life that was fast vanishing after the Civil War. The age of industrialization was moving people to the cities. Whittier wrote that he based the poem on his early years growing up with family members he described in “Snow-Bound.” The circle around the Whittier fireplace included his father, mother, brother, two sisters, unmarried aunt and uncle, and the district schoolmaster, who boarded with families of his pupils. I had the thrill of going to Haverhill some time ago and seeing the very home, fireplace, and andirons that Whittier described in his poem.

What is the poem about? A blizzard is coming to the Whittier farm, and they don’t need a meteorologist to warn them. Just looking at the dark sky is enough. The children do their chores, and then after dinner they all sit around the fireplace and listen to their elders tell stories about days gone by. The gale goes on all night, and they’re snowbound for several days. Whittier’s father tells the two boys to dig a tunnel to the barn so they can feed the animals. What an exotic terrain they see, with objects covered in snow and resembling nothing they remembered. It is a joyous time for youngsters.

The poem also mirrors Whittier’s sadness. As he composed it, Whittier wrote that no one from that family group was alive except himself, at age fifty-nine, and his brother. He described his sister, whom he loved so dearly, who died young. But in a hopeful vein, his thoughts dwelled on faith. He wrote that he felt sad for those who “lay their dead away” without hope. Because he knew he would one day see his family members again, he reminded his readers that, “Life is ever lord of Death/And love can never lose its own.”

When my younger brother died in 2003, I didn’t have a hand in planning his funeral. But to my astonishment, the memorial program included those lines from “Snow-Bound” about faith and hope. They were my favorite lines from one of my well-loved poems, and I’d like to think he was telling me something.