Snow

Snow is a form of precipitation consisting of crystalline water ice that falls as small flakes from clouds.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town.
- Robert Bridges, London Snow, (1890) l. 1-4.

But pleasures are like poppies spread—
You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river—
A moment white—then melts forever.
- Robert Burns, Tam o' Shanter (1790) Line 59

The Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow.
- Robert Frost, Hyla Brook (1920).

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
- Robert Frost, Dust of Snow (1923).

If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes
Will keep my talk from getting overwise,
I'm not the one for putting off the proof.
Let it be overwhelming, off a roof
And round a corner, blizzard snow for dust,
And blind me to a standstill if it must.
- Robert Frost, Dust in the Eyes (1928).

But he sent her Good-by,
And said to be good,
And wear her red hood,
And look for skunk tracks
In the snow with an ax —
And do everything!
- Robert Frost.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
- Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923), St. 1.

The snow was getting so deep they could hardly drag their little legs through it, and the trees were thicker and more like each other than ever. There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and worst of all, no way out.
- Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908).

My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun was rising and showing against the black tree trunks! As you went along in the stillness, every now and then masses of snow slid off the branches suddenly with a flop! making you jump and run for cover. Snow castles and snow caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night-and snow bridges, terraces, ramparts-I could have stayed and played with them for hours.
- Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908).

Then, on the silence of the snows there lay
A Sabbath's quiet sunshine,—and its bell
Filled the hushed air awhile, with lonely sway;
For the stream's voice was chained by Winter's spell,
The deep wood-sounds had ceased.
- Felicia Hemans, The League of the Alps, or the Meeting on the Field of Grütli (1826)

琴詩酒友皆抛我雪月花時最憶君
- Friends on pipa, poetry and drinking, all of them cast me away. When I see the snow, the moon or blossoms, I long for you deeply.
- Bai Juyi (772 - 846),「寄殷律協」.

国境のトンネルを越えると雪国であった。夜の底が白くなった。
- The train came out of the long border tunnel — and there was the snow country. The night had turned white.
- Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country (1948), translated by Edward Seidensticker.

Huey: Days like this, I look out at all the snow and think. Man, this is beautiful…
Then I wonder – is it really beautiful, or have we just been conditioned to think of everything “white” as beautiful? Is my mind, perhaps, not as liberated from the slave mentality as I thought?
Then I think, what if snow were brown? Would I find it as nice to look at, or would it look “dirty”? Is this indicative that somewhere within my subconscious lurks some heretofore undiscovered self-hate?
- Aaron McGruder, The Boondocks, (12/10/2000)

...the wind had dropped, and the snow, tired of rushing around in circles trying to catch itself up, now fluttered gently down until it found a place on which to rest, and sometimes the place was Pooh's nose and sometimes it wasn't and in a little while Piglet was wearing a white muffler round his neck and feeling more snowy behind the ears than he had ever felt before.
- A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner (1928).

Snow forms mainly when water vapor turns to ice without going through the liquid stage. This process is called deposition. Snow can form in the gentle updrafts of stratus clouds or at high altitudes in very cold regions of a thunderstorm. Snowflakes that most of us are used to seeing are not individual snow crystals, but are actually aggregates, or collections, of snow crystals that stick or otherwise attach to each other. Aggregates can grow to very large sizes compared to individual snow crystals.
- NSSL NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory SEVERE WEATHER 101

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
- Christina Rossetti, Mid-Winter (1872), st. 1.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 723.

Lo, sifted through the winds that blow,
Down comes the soft and silent snow,
White petals from the flowers that grow
In the cold atmosphere.
- George W. Bungay, The Artists of the Air.

Through the sharp air a flaky torrent flies,
Mocks the slow sight, and hides the gloomy skies;
The fleecy clouds their chilly bosoms bare,
And shed their substance on the floating air.
- George Crabbe, Inebriety.

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 farmhouse 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.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Snow-Storm.

Come, see the north-wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, naught cares he
For number or proportion.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Snow-Storm.

Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Snow-Flakes.

Where's the snow
That fell the year that's fled—where's the snow?
- Samuel Lover, The Snow.

Notre Dame des Neiges.
- Our Lady of the Snows.
- Emile Nelligan, title of a poem.

Sancta Maria ad Nives.
- Name of the basilica dedicated to Our Lady, now known as Santa Maria Maggiora. Many Catholic churches so called after the famous legend.

As I saw fair Chloris walk alone,
The feather'd snow came softly down,
As Jove, descending from his tow'r
To court her in a silver show'r.
The wanton snow flew to her breast,
As little birds into their nest;
But o'ercome with whiteness there,
For grief dissolv'd into a tear.
Thence falling on her garment hem,
To deck her, froze into a gem.
- On Chloris walking in the Snow. In Wit's Recreations. J. C. Hotten's reprint, p. 308. (1640).

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan? C'estoit le plus grand soucy qu'eust Villon, le poëte parisien.
- But where are the snows of last year? That was the greatest concern of Villon, the Parisian poet.
- François Rabelais, Pantagruel (1532), Chapter XIV.

A little snow, tumbled about, anon becomes a mountain.
- William Shakespeare, King John (1598), Act III, scene 4, line 176.

O that I were a mockery king of snow,
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water drops!
- William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), Act IV, scene 1, line 260.

For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.
- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act III, scene 2, line 18.

Lawn as white as driven snow.
- William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act IV, scene 4, line 220.

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?
- But where are the snows of yester year?
- François Villon, Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis.

O the snow, the beautiful snow,
Filling the sky and earth below;
Over the house-tops, over the street,
Over the heads of the people you meet,
Dancing, flirting, skimming along.
- James W. Watson, Beautiful Snow.