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Dust of Snow

Robert Frost

1874 –

1963

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

This poem is in the public domain.

One of the most celebrated figures in American poetry, Robert Frost was the author of numerous poetry collections, including New Hampshire (Henry Holt and Company, 1923). Born in San Francisco in 1874, he lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont. He died in Boston in 1963.

About Robert Frost

Themes

Public Domain

About this Poem

“Dust of Snow” was first published as “A Favour” in the London Mercury vol. 3, no. 14 (December 1920) and again as “Snow Dust” in a January 1921 issue of the Yale Review before appearing under its current title in the collection New Hampshire (Henry Holt and Company, 1923). Laurence Perrine, former professor of English at Southern Methodist University, in his comment “Frost’s Dust of Snow,” published in The Explicator vol. 29, no. 7 (1971), writes that “‘[t]he way’ in which a crow shakes down dust of snow on Frost’s speaker is left unspecified, thus permitting several possibilities. I see them chiefly as four: beautifully, animatedly, cheerily, and humorously. First, the poem presents a scene of visual beauty, black etched against white, the movement of the scattered snow counterpointed against the immobility of the evergreen tree. Second, the action of the crow presents a bit of life and animation in a scene otherwise frozen and without sign of life. Third, the scattering of the snow on the speaker is almost an acknowledgment of his presence, a greeting, a communication between the two living actors in the scene. Fourth, the snow’s falling on the speaker suggests a touch of humor, as if the sly crow were playing a practical joke on him. The beauty of the action, its evidence of life, its suggestion of a greeting, and the touch of humor in it combine to lighten the mood of the speaker.”

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More by this poet

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Robert Frost

1916

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

1923

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

Robert Frost

1923

Poems

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Dust of Snow

More by this poet

The Road Not Taken

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

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