Snowmageddon (Aka Watching Your Fellow English Majors Go Insane)
Walking outside today feels like a scene from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. The streets are disturbingly empty and the few who do dare to venture outside are so bundled up you cannot even see their faces. All winter wonderland fun has been abandoned for general misery. Instead we are locked up in our dorms, apartments, and houses going stir crazy. Who knew that Sartre’s No Exit was not just an existentialist play, but reality? Sorry for all of the pretentious literary references (even though this is the English blog), but clearly I am losing my mind as well. It seemed only fitting though to post an excerpt from John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem, “Snowbound.” My wonderful Irish literature professor, Christopher Griffin, sent this to me today and I couldn’t resist putting up. Enjoy! Stay safe, warm, and sane!
Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro,
Crossed and recrossed the wingàd snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
So all night long the storm roared on:
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Nature’s geometric signs,
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown
On nothing we could call our own.
