Snow Flakes (from "twice Told Tales")
1837
In this luminous fragment of reflective prose, Hawthorne transforms a New England snowstorm into a meditation on solitude, beauty, and perseverance. Written in 1837 during the height of American Romanticism, the piece unfolds as the author watches snow envelop his village, transforming familiar streets into something alien and sacred. Children bundle in winter coats, their laughter carried on the bitter wind; the landscape lies muffled beneath a glittering white mantle. Yet Hawthorne finds more than melancholy in the blank whiteness. He personifies winter not as a cruel tyrant but as a powerful, even nurturing force, one that strips away the world's noise to reveal its essential silence. The piece reaches its quiet climax with the appearance of snowbirds fluttering through the storm: small, persistent creatures that embody resilience and the stubborn persistence of joy even in the coldest season. This is not a story with a plot, but a mood captured in prose, a brief and perfect recording of one man's encounter with winter's dual nature its harshness and its strange comfort.
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“Pleasant is a rainy winter's day, within doors! The best study for such a day, or the best amusement,”
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Thus from beneath the black veil there rolled a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him.””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their hearts so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be matured on earth;””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth and complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these feelings into words?””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a black veil!””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world; it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman's love and kept him in that saddest of all prisons his own heart;””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“I wonder he is not afraid to be alone with himself." "Men sometimes are so," said her husband.””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The subject had reference to secret sin and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them.””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Yet perhaps the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to the minister as his black veil to them.””
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Snow Flakes (from "twice Told Tales"). Lex, lex-books.com/book/snow-flakes-from-twice-told-tales-5a3e7764-631e-4c29-a706-5585aabf9f0d.Hawthorne, N. (1837). Snow Flakes (from "twice Told Tales"). Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/snow-flakes-from-twice-told-tales-5a3e7764-631e-4c29-a706-5585aabf9f0dHawthorne, Nathaniel. Snow Flakes (from "twice Told Tales"). Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/snow-flakes-from-twice-told-tales-5a3e7764-631e-4c29-a706-5585aabf9f0d.
