Snowdrop
Now is the globe shrunk tight Round the mouse’s dulled wintering heart. Weasel and crow, as if moulded in brass, Move through an outer darkness Not in their right minds, With the other deaths. She, too, pursues her ends, Brutal as the stars of this month, Her pale head heavy as metal.
death
free verse
dark
Snowdrop - meaning Summary
Life Within Winter
The poem presents the snowdrop as a small but forceful presence within a frozen landscape. Around it, animals endure winter in a state close to death, while darkness and cold seem mechanical and pitiless. The flower is not sentimentalized: its emergence is described as determined and severe. Hughes makes survival feel brutal, suggesting that new life belongs to the same hard natural order as death.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.