Snow / John Davidson (I-II)

Snow

I

'Who affirms that crystals are alive?'
     I affirm it, let who will deny:
Crystals are engendered, wax and thrive,
     Wane and wither; I have seen them die.

Trust me, masters, crystals have their day,
     Eager to attain the perfect norm,
Lit with purpose, potent to display
     Facet, angle, colour, beauty, form.


II

Water-crystals need for flower and root
     Sixty clear degrees, no less, no more;
Snow, so fickle, still in this acute
     Angle thinks, and learns no other lore:

Such its life, and such its pleasure is,
     Such its art and traffic, such its gain,
Evermore in new conjunctions this
     Admirable angle to maintain.

Crystalcraft in every flower and flake
     Snow exhibits, of the welkin free:
Crystalline are crystals for the sake,
     All and singular, of crystalry.

Yet does every crystal of the snow
     Individualize, a seedling sown
Broadcast, but instinct with power to grow
     Beautiful in beauty of its own.

Every flake with all its prongs and dints
     Burns ecstatic as a new-lit star:
Men are not more diverse, finger prints
     More dissimilar than snow-flakes are.

Worlds of men and snow endure, increase,
     Woven of power and passion to defy
Time and travail: only races cease,
     Individual men and crystals die.

~~

John Davidson (1857-1909)

from Fleet Street, and other poems, 1909

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[Read the complete poem here]

John Davidson biography

Snow / John Davidson (III-V)

III

Jewelled shapes of snow whose feathery showers,
     Fallen or falling wither at a breath,
All afraid are they, and loth as flowers
     Beasts and men to tread the way to death.

Once I saw upon an object-glass,
     Martyred underneath a microscope,
One elaborate snow-flake slowly pass,
     Dying hard, beyond the reach of hope.

Still from shape to shape the crystal changed,
     Writhing in its agony; and still,
Less and less elaborate, arranged
     Potently the angle of its will.

Tortured to a simple final form,
     Angles six and six divergent beams,
Lo, in death it touched the perfect norm
     Verifying all its crystal dreams!


IV 

Such the noble tragedy of one
     Martyred snow-flake. Who can tell the fate
Heinous and uncouth of showers undone,
     Fallen in cities!– showers that expiate

Errant lives from polar worlds adrift
     Where the great millennial snows abide;
Castaways from mountain-chains that lift
     Snowy summits in perennial pride;

Nomad snows, or snows in evil day
     Born to urban ruin, to be tossed,
Trampled, shovelled, ploughed and swept away
     Down the seething sewers: all the frost

Flowers of heaven melted up with lees,
     Offal, recrement, but every flake
Showing to the last in fixed degrees
     Perfect crystals for the crystal's sake.


V

Usefulness of snow is but a chance
     Here in temperate climes with winter sent,
Sheltering earth's prolonged hibernal trance:
     All utility is accident.

Sixty clear degrees the joyful snow,
     Practising economy of means,
Fashions endless beauty in, and so
     Glorifies the universe with scenes

Arctic and antarctic: stainless shrouds,
     Ermine woven in silvery frost, attire
Peaks in every land among the clouds
     Crowned with snows to catch the morning's fire.

~~

John Davidson (1857-1909)

from Fleet Street, and other poems, 1909

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[Read the complete poem here]

John Davidson biography