This episode of Classic Poetry Aloud features a solo reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem 'The Snowstorm'. The host begins by announcing the poem and providing the show's website. The poem opens with the snowstorm arriving, announced by trumpets of the sky, and driving over fields without alighting. It hides hills, woods, rivers, and heavens, veiling a farmhouse. The storm stops sleds and travellers, delays couriers, and shuts out friends, forcing housemates to sit around a radiant fireplace in a tumultuous privacy. The poem then invites listeners to see the north wind's masonry, describing it as a fierce artificer from an unseen quarry. This artificer curves white bastions with projected roofs around stakes, trees, and doors. It works with myriad hands, wild and savage, not caring for number or proportion. Mockingly, it hangs parian wreaths on coops or kennels. A swan-like form invests a hidden thorn, and the snow fills the farmer's lane from wall to wall, described as a morgue of the farmer's sighs. At the gate, a tapering turret hops the work. When the artificer's hours are numbered and the world is its own, it retires as if it were not, leaving when the sun appears. The snow leaves astonished art to mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, described as the frolic architecture of the snow. The episode ends with the host saying 'Classic poetry.' The format is a straightforward recitation without additional commentary, focusing on the emotional and auditory experience of the poem. The recurring theme is nature's transformative and artistic power through a snowstorm. Key moments include the dramatic opening, the isolation around the fireplace, the personification of the wind, and the reflective conclusion on temporary art.
