Hemlock and Cedar
Hemlock and Cedar - meaning Summary
Winter Scene Linking Labor and Vision
The poem sketches a compact rural winter scene through sensory details—blue and yellow smoke, falling leaves, measured machine sounds, and muddy snow. These images move from distant fields and mills to a specific human figure, Oscar, riding a bobsled and singing ragtime. The bright red of his cap becomes a visual thread tying labor, weather, and landscape together, suggesting how small human presence animates and connects a wider natural workscape.
Read Complete AnalysesTHIN sheets of blue smoke among white slabs ... near the shingle mill ... winter morning. Falling of a dry leaf might be heard ... circular steel tears through a log. Slope of woodland ... brown ... soft ... tinge of blue such as pansy eyes. Farther, field fires ... funnel of yellow smoke ... spellings of other yellow in corn stubble. Bobsled on a down-hill road ... February snow mud ... horses steaming ... Oscar the driver sings ragtime under a spot of red seen a mile ... the red wool yarn of Oscar's stocking cap is seen from the shingle mill to the ridge of hemlock and cedar.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.