Gallant blazing

Big Frank woke this morning to snow - the first snowfall of the year, brought in on the back of the first really cold spell - and it's going to get colder, dipping below zero soon. So . . . thoughts of snow leads to thoughts of poetry with snow. Wallace Stevens came to mind. Here's his poem "A Quiet Normal Life." His line on how he is not like snow, is one of the best descriptions of snow I've ever read: "gallant notions on the part of cold."But when he goes on to describe how his tranquil thought grew peaked (like a flame) in his heart - "cut by gallant notions on the part of night". Well, here we have entered the rare realm of great poetry.

A Quiet Normal Life

His place, as he sat and as he thought, was not

In anything that he constructed, so frail,

So barely lit, so shadowed over and naught,

As, for example, a world in which, like snow,

He became an inhabitant, obedient

To gallant notions on the part of cold.

It was here. This was the setting and the time

Of year. here in his house and in his room,

In his chair, the most tranquil thought grew peaked

And the oldest and the warmest heart was cut

By gallant notions on the part of night--

Both late and alone, above the crickets' chords,

Babbling, each one, the uniqueness of its sound.

There was no fury in transcendent forms,

But this actual candle blazed with artifice.

---- Wallace Stevens