Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Woods in Winter

{{smallcaps|When}} winter winds are piercing chill,
And through the hawthorn blows the gale,

solemn feet

The speaker walks deliberately, almost ritually—not trudging through cold, but choosing this winter walk as a purposeful act.

With solemn feet I tread the hill,
That overbrows the lonely vale.
O'er the bare upland, and away
Through the long reach of desert woods,
The embracing sunbeams chastely play,

chastely play

Unusual word choice—sunbeams are 'chaste' because winter light is pure, restrained, non-generative. Summer sun makes things grow; winter sun just illuminates.

And gladden these deep solitudes.
Where, twisted round the barren oak,
The summer vine in beauty clung,
And summer winds the stillness broke,
The crystal icicle is hung.

frozen urns

Springs become funeral urns—classical imagery making the landscape monumental. Water still flows but from ice, like pouring from stone vessels.

Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs
Pour out the river's gradual tide,
Shrilly the skater's iron rings,
And voices fill the woodland side.
Alas! how changed from the fair scene,

Alas! how changed

The poem's emotional turn. First three stanzas observe winter neutrally; now the speaker mourns summer's loss—but this regret doesn't last.

When birds sang out their mellow lay,
And winds were soft, and woods were green,
And the song ceased not with the day!

wild music is abroad

The counter-turn. Wind through reeds makes literal music—winter has its own sounds, not silence. The word 'abroad' suggests this music travels, fills space.

But still wild music is abroad,
Pale, desert woods! within your crowd;
And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,
Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.
Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear
Has grown familiar with your song;
I hear it in the opening year,
I listen, and it cheers me long.

it cheers me long

Final revelation: he's learned to love winter's sounds. 'Long' means both 'for a long time' and 'all winter long'—sustained comfort, not momentary.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Poem's Emotional Arc

This isn't a simple winter description—it's a three-part argument about how we learn to love what's harsh. The structure matters: stanzas 1-3 observe winter neutrally (transformed landscape, ice replacing vine, skaters on frozen springs). Stanza 5 breaks this with "Alas!"—sudden nostalgia for summer's "mellow lay" and green woods.

But stanza 6 pivots with "But still"—winter has its own music. The "vocal reeds" aren't silent; wind makes them pipe. This is Longfellow's central move: winter isn't the absence of summer, it's a different presence. The final stanza completes the thought: "my ear / Has grown familiar with your song." Familiarity breeds not contempt but comfort. "It cheers me long" reverses the "Alas"—what seemed like loss becomes sustenance.

The poem teaches itself to hear differently. It starts with visual transformation (vine to icicle), moves through nostalgic hearing (remembering birdsong), and ends with present-tense listening (wind-music that cheers). Longfellow wrote this in his thirties in Cambridge, Massachusetts—he's not describing exotic wilderness but learning to hear New England winter as something other than the absence of warmth.

What 'Desert' Meant in 1840s Poetry

Longfellow uses "desert woods" twice—a word choice that sounds wrong to modern ears. He doesn't mean sandy wasteland; he means deserted, emptied out, unpopulated. The woods are a "desert" the same way a "deserted" house is empty but still standing.

This matters because the poem is about winter as depopulation, not destruction. The oak is "barren" (no leaves), springs are "mute" (frozen silent), but everything still exists—transformed, not gone. Even the "long reach of desert woods" emphasizes extent, not death. The landscape is vast and empty, which is precisely what allows "sunbeams" to "play" and "gladden these deep solitudes."

The word appears in "Pale, desert woods!" as direct address—he's speaking to the woods as a presence, not an absence. They're a "crowd" (stanza 6), populated by wind and reeds making "wild music." Desert here means stripped down to essentials, which lets you hear what's always been there.