Lyrics below
My brother Paul just sent me this photo that he took of the current view across his backyard. It inspired me to choose today’s song
The lyrics of today’s song, Snow, are a poem by Canadian Poet Archibald Lampman (1861-1899). Poetry is not a lucrative profession. Although he had graduated from Trinity College in Port Hope, Ontario (now part of the University of Toronto) after a brief ill-fated attempt at teaching he settled into a job as a low-paid clerk in the Ottawa Post Office Department, a position he held for the rest of his short life. He hated the job but needed the money to support his wife and three children.
He had friends who were also poets and are well-regarded today, and they have come to be called the Confederation Group. They gave each other moral support but they were all as poor as he was. At one point three of them banded together to write a literary column called At the Mermaid Inn for the Toronto Globe, but they were only paid a pittance for it.
The year 1895, when he wrote Snow, seems to have been the high point of his career. In that year Lampman was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and his second collection of poems, Lyrics of Earth, was brought out by a Boston publisher. That thin volume includes what are now considered to be his best poems. But it didn’t sell very well and so it didn’t bring him either fame or fortune.
Although he loved the outdoors, and most of his poetry is about nature, Lampman was never very healthy. He died in Ottawa at the age of 37 due to a weak heart, an after-effect of a childhood bout with rheumatic fever.
Throughout his short life Archibald Lampman sought recognition for his poetry. That did eventually come to him, but only after he died. Lampman is now widely considered to be Canada’s best English-language 19th century poet. Considering that he hated his job as a Post Office clerk it seems ironic that a Canadian stamp was issued in his honour in 1989.
Lampman’s Snow was set to music by Canadian singer and harpist Loreena McKennitt in 1995. She certainly has achieved fame and fortune in her lifetime, and her example is probably single-handedly responsible for the fact that Canada has an incredibly large number of fine female harpists. You can read more about her from her extensive Wikipedia entry. This song was recorded in 1995 but this track is from her 2008 album A Midwinter Night’s Dream where it was reissued (and remastered?).
Snow
by Archbald Lampman, 1895
White are the far-off plains, and white
The fading forests grow;
The wind dies out along the height,
And denser still the snow,
A gathering weight on roof and tree,
Falls down scarce audibly.
The road before me smooths and fills
Apace, and all about
The fences dwindle, and the hills
Are blotted slowly out;
The naked trees loom spectrally
Into the dim white sky.
The meadows and far-sheeted streams
Lie still without a sound;
Like some soft minister of dreams
The snow-fall hoods me round;
In wood and water, earth and air,
A silence everywhere.
Save when at lonely intervals
Some farmer's sleigh, urged on,
With rustling runners and sharp bells,
Swings by me and is gone;
Or from the empty waste I hear
A sound remote and clear;
The barking of a dog, or call
To cattle, sharply pealed,
Borne echoing from some wayside stall
Or barnyard far a-field;
Then all is silent, and the snow
Falls, settling soft and slow.
The evening deepens, and the gray
Folds closer earth and sky;
The world seems shrouded far away;
Its noises sleep, and I,
As secret as yon buried stream,
Plod dumbly on, and dream.
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