Comparing Emerson's "The Snow-Storm" and Dickinson's "It sifts from leaden sieves" reveals an interesting idea: that Dickinson might been rewriting Emerson's drama.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “The Snow-Storm” was published in 1841; about twenty-two years later (1862), Emily Dickinson composed “It sifts from Leaden Sieves”; therefore, she no doubt had read and enjoyed Emerson’s drama focusing on the behavior of snow.
Dickinson often practiced rewriting other people’s work, especially poems. It was a game or exercise for her. She certainly put her own stamp on the work, because we never feel we are experiencing a plagiarized product. What Dickinson practiced was in no way plagiarism.
Comparing these two snow poems reveals fascinating nuances of similarity. Emerson’s poem is much more chatty than Dickinson’s; she crystallizes events that Emerson lets sprawl, for example, the opening lines of Emerson’s “The Snow-Storm” state: Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, / Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, / Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air / Hides hills and woods, the river.
Dickinson sees the snow more specifically as being sifted like flour from a sieve, an image she would have observed many times as she baked bread and biscuits in her large family kitchen. Just as the flour powders the kitchen counter, the snow “powders all the Wood.” Then the flour/snow becomes “Alabaster Wool” filling the “Wrinkles of the Road.”
Dickinson’s observation of the snow turns into specific metaphoric images right away, whereas Emerson states his observation in much more prose-like expressions. The trumpets of the sky announce the arrival of the snow as trumpeters would announce the arrival of a royal personage.
Then the snow drives over the fields, but seems not to land anywhere. “The whited air” then hides the hills, the woodlands, and the river. Emerson’s opening, while revealing the interesting metaphor of the trumpeters, does not create anything new of the snow as Dickinson did when she metaphorized it into flour.
Both poems show the snow recreating the landscape. Emerson imagines, north wind's masonry. / Out of an unseen quarry evermore / Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer / Curves his white bastions with projected roof.
While Dickinson sees that, It makes an Even Face / Of Mountain, and of Plain — / Unbroken Forehead from the East / Unto the East again.”
Both Emerson and Dickinson liken the creations of the snow to art work: “Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art / To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,” claims Emerson, while Dickinson observes, “It Ruffles Wrists of Posts / As Ankles of a Queen — / Then stills its Artisans — like Ghosts — / Denying they have been.”
And they both end on a similar note, that after the artists of snow had finished their creations, they magically vanished, and it is as if they had never been there—only the mystery of the snowy art remains.
Both poems offer us a wonderful look at snow and give us a drama that only two accomplished poets can provide. Emerson’s experience is sprawling and more generalized than Dickinson’s.
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