The Full Text of “The Buck in the Snow”
1White sky, over the hemlocks bowed with snow,
2Saw you not at the beginning of evening the antlered buck and his doe
3Standing in the apple-orchard? I saw them. I saw them suddenly go,
4Tails up, with long leaps lovely and slow,
5Over the stone-wall into the wood of hemlocks bowed with snow.
6Now lies he here, his wild blood scalding the snow.
7How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers
8The buck in the snow.
9How strange a thing,—a mile away by now, it may be,
10Under the heavy hemlocks that as the moments pass
11Shift their loads a little, letting fall a feather of snow—
12Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.
The Full Text of “The Buck in the Snow”
1White sky, over the hemlocks bowed with snow,
2Saw you not at the beginning of evening the antlered buck and his doe
3Standing in the apple-orchard? I saw them. I saw them suddenly go,
4Tails up, with long leaps lovely and slow,
5Over the stone-wall into the wood of hemlocks bowed with snow.
6Now lies he here, his wild blood scalding the snow.
7How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers
8The buck in the snow.
9How strange a thing,—a mile away by now, it may be,
10Under the heavy hemlocks that as the moments pass
11Shift their loads a little, letting fall a feather of snow—
12Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.
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“The Buck in the Snow” Introduction
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"The Buck in the Snow" is a poem by American poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay, first published in a collection of the same title in 1928. In the poem, the speaker recalls seeing a strong, vivacious-looking a buck and doe—a male and female deer—earlier in the evening, only to then be confronted with the buck's body lying dead in the snow. The poem is about the fragility and unpredictability of life.
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“The Buck in the Snow” Summary
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The speaker asks the white sky, which hangs above hemlock trees whose branches are heavy with snow, if it saw a male deer and his mate at the start of the evening. The two deer were standing in the apple-orchard. The speaker definitively saw them. The speaker also saw them suddenly run away, their tails high as they gracefully leapt over a stone wall and into the snowy woods.
Now, however, the male deer is lying right there on the ground before the speaker. He is bleeding, and his hot blood burns the surrounding snow.
The speaker acknowledges the strange power of death, which can conquer such a powerful and beautiful creature. The speaker again emphasizes death's strangeness, and then goes on to imagine that, perhaps a mile away—beneath hemlock trees loaded down with snow, whose branches shift from time to time and cause snow to fall lightly to the ground—the female deer is still alive, and cautiously observing her surroundings.
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“The Buck in the Snow” Themes
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The Fragility of Life
The speaker reflects on the strangeness seeing a dead buck in the snow, having observed, only a short while earlier, that same buck and his mate gracefully leaping through the snowy woods. The vivid image of the strong, vivacious buck now brought "to his knees," his blood pooling in the surrounding snow, reflects the fragility of life and the immense power of death. Life, the poem suggests, is fleeting and unpredictable, whereas death is sudden and merciless.
When the speaker first saw the buck and doe earlier in the evening, the animals were the image of life and vitality—seemingly virile and strong. The buck is described as “antlered,” for example. Antlers are a buck’s weapons when competing for mates and here represent the buck’s physical prowess. The phrase “antlered buck and his doe” also implies that the pair are mates, and thus full of the potential to reproduce and bring new life into the world. The fact that the buck and the doe “suddenly” take flight with “long leaps” over a wall again emphasizes their sheer physical liveliness. At first, then, the animals seem quite far from death—vividly aware of their surroundings and filled with strength and promise.
Yet the next time the speaker sees the buck the animal is dead, “his wild blood scalding the snow.” This blood represents the buck's fierce and powerful life force. However “wild” and hot the virile buck’s blood may be, however, it is now leaking out of him and causing the surrounding snow to steam. The blood will cool and maybe even freeze in the snow, and this image thus implies the eventual power of icy death over even the most vivacious of creatures.
The speaker thus muses on the “strange[ness]” of death in that it can “bring” this lively and vigorous buck "to his knees” and “to his antlers.” A buck is typically brought “to his knees” and “to his antlers” when defeated by another buck during mating season. But here, death itself defeats the buck, who, again, just moments before this had been filled with life.
In the end, the speaker realizes that all life is fleeting and fragile. While looking at the dead buck, the speaker thinks about how "as the moments pass," the snow falls from the hemlock trees. The world is utterly unmoved by the buck’s death. Snow is, of course, also associated with winter, which is a season symbolically tied to death. This falling snow thus suggests the ever-present reality of death, and also reiterates the utterly fragility of life. There are few things as physically delicate as a snowflake, and yet soon enough these may bury the body of the once wild buck. In the end, the poem implies, death has power over all living things, and that it can come without warning.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Buck in the Snow”
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Lines 1-3
White sky, over the hemlocks bowed with snow,
Saw you not at the beginning of evening the antlered buck and his doe
Standing in the apple-orchard?On the level of plot, the poem begins pretty simply. The speaker saw an "antlered buck and his doe," meaning a male deer and his mate, standing in an apple orchard earlier in the evening. Even these seemingly straightforward lines, however, are filled with rich symbolism.
The speaker begins by posing a question to the sky, which is white because it is a cloudy winter day. Winter is a season symbolically associated with death (think about it: this is the time of year when the ground freezes, plants are dormant, and many animals hibernate), and thus in calling the sky "white," the speaker links the snowy sky to death as well. By directly addressing the sky directly, the speaker also personifies it, implying that the sky is a figure watching "over" the earth. Altogether, this imagery thus establishes the omnipresence of death. That is, the white sky looking "over the hemlocks" symbolizes the presence of death constantly lurking in the background of the poem, and of life.
The speaker specifically positions the sky "over the hemlocks bowed with snow." Hemlocks are a type of evergreen trees, meaning they remain green throughout the year. The color green is associated with spring and new life. Yet these hemlocks here are "bowed with snow." On a literal level, this just means that their branches are loaded down with snow. Symbolically, though, this image of green trees sagging under the weight of winter snow again implies that supremacy of death, which rules over all of nature.
In line 2, the speaker refers to "the beginning of evening," revealing that time has passed since she first saw the animals, but not that much time; after all, it is still the same day. This specific language also adds to the sense of foreboding in the poem: evening is associated with darkness, which is usually associated with despair, sorrow, and death. Therefore, the "beginning of evening" represents the transition from a period of light—daytime—to a period of darkness. As it moves on, the poem itself progresses further into darkness—symbolically, into sorrow and death.
The image of the "antlered buck and his doe," however, contrasts with the foreboding setting of the poem. An antlered buck, or male deer, is one that has reached sexual maturity. Moreover, this buck is paired with a "doe." The pairing represents the vigor and hope of life, and the potential of new life. Their presence in the "apple-orchard" also suggests that they are there in search of sustenance to help them survive the winter.
The first three lines thus set up a sharp symbolic contrast between death, as represented by the white sky, the "hemlocks bowed with snow," and "the beginning of evening," and life, as represented by the "antlered buck and his doe" and the "apple-orchard."
In terms of structure, "The Buck in the Snow" is not written in any particular form or meter. Rather, like many of Millay's poems, the poem is written in free verse (albeit with frequent rhyme). The lack of structure and pattern in the poem suits the content of the poem, which addresses the unpredictable and unstructured nature of death.
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Lines 3-5
I saw them. I saw them suddenly go,
Tails up, with long leaps lovely and slow,
Over the stone-wall into the wood of hemlocks bowed with snow. -
Line 6
Now lies he here, his wild blood scalding the snow.
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Lines 7-8
How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers
The buck in the snow. -
Lines 9-11
How strange a thing,—a mile away by now, it may be,
Under the heavy hemlocks that as the moments pass
Shift their loads a little, letting fall a feather of snow— -
Line 12
Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.
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“The Buck in the Snow” Symbols
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Snow
Winter is a season traditionally associated with death. It is a time when many animals hibernate and many plants are dormant; it is inhospitable, barren, and cold. In the poem, the winter landscape plays into this symbolism: the backdrop of snow represents the ever-present reality of death.
For example, in line 6, the buck's hot, "wild blood" scalds—or burns, scorches—the snow. The blood represents the animal's strength and vigor, which turns to hissing steam when it comes into contact with the cold snow. The snow will cause the blood to cool and eventually freeze, representing death's triumph over life.
Millay further deepens this symbolism in line 11 when she describes "a feather of snow" falling from the hemlock trees. This image emphasizes the delicate nature of the snow. Snowflakes, though fragile, will soon bury the body of the buck. Death, the image implies, is so powerful, and life so delicate and tenuous, that death need not rely on the same kind of strength and force that characterizes animals like the "antlered buck" in order to assert its dominance.
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The Antlered Buck
A buck is a male deer. The fact that this buck is antlered means that he has reached maturity. Antlers not only attract mates, but can also be used to compete against other males. An antlered buck is therefore at the prime of his life, a powerful and virile animal. In "The Buck in the Snow," the antlered buck represents vitality itself.
In the first stanza, for example, note how the buck and his doe gracefully leap over a stone wall. This underscores that they are lively and energetic creatures. However, no matter how powerful or vigorous the buck may seem to be, he is still ultimately conquered by death. In stanza 2, the buck lies dead in the snow. Although his blood is hot, again emphasizing his vigor, the buck is still dead. And though he was once "wild," he has now been tamed by death. Death, therefore, conquers all life, no matter how powerful that life may seem to be.
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“The Buck in the Snow” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Imagery
Imagery is an important part of "The Buck in the Snow," used by the poet to engage the reader and set the scene, and also to establish important symbolism.
In the first stanza, Millay uses imagery to create a rich setting for the poem. The speaker describes a quiet, wintry landscape filled with snow. There are evergreen "hemlocks bowed with snow," an "antlered buck and his doe," an "apple-orchard," and a "stone-wall." This imagery seems idyllic and peaceful, a simple scene of a buck and his mate, two animals in the prime of their lives. When the deer leap, the speaker observes that their "long leaps" are "lovely and slow," a description that emphasizes the animals' power and grace.
At the same time, however, some of this imagery is also foreboding. In line 1, the speaker addresses a "White sky," implying that the sky above is not clear and blue but rather cloudy and filled with the potential for snow. Snow arrives with the winter, a barren season symbolically associated with death. The landscape's abundant snow and the watchful white sky, therefore, suggest death lurking in the background of the otherwise lovely, peaceful scene.
In keeping with this, the hemlocks in the scene are "bowed with snow." Hemlocks are an evergreen tree, meaning that they do not lose their leaves in the winter; their presence suggests the perseverance of life even in the harshest of seasons, yet here the trees sag under the weight of the snow—under the heavy presence of death.
The imagery of the second stanza brings that sense of foreboding to fruition. In line 6, the buck, so lively just a short time earlier, lies dead before the speaker, "his wild blood scalding the snow." The imagery here establishes the sharp contrast between the heat of the buck's "wild blood," essentially representing his life force, and the coldness of the snow, representing death. There is also an implied striking visual contrast between the redness of the blood and the pure whiteness of the snow. These contrasts—between red and white, between heat and icy cold—reflect the symbolic opposition between life and death.
The third stanza of the poem confirms the power of death over life. In lines 7-8, the speaker describes death "bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers / The buck in the snow." A buck that has fallen to his "knees" and "antlers" is a buck that has lost a fight. This image thus illustrates death's conquest of the mighty buck—again establishing the power of death over all life, no matter how virile and strong that life may seem.
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Repetition
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Caesura
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Alliteration
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Consonance
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Assonance
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Enjambment
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Personification
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"The Buck in the Snow" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Hemlocks
- Antlered
- Buck
- Doe
- Scalding
- Attentive
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A type of evergreen tree.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Buck in the Snow”
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Form
"The Buck in the Snow" is not written in any particular form. The 12-line poem is made up of three stanzas, which can be broken down as a:
- Quintet (a five-line stanza)
- Monostich (a one-line stanza)
- Sestet (a six-line stanza)
"The Buck in the Snow" highlights the power of death over life and, therefore, the fragility and uncertainty of life. The poem's lack of structure and widely varied stanza lengths mirrors life's unpredictability. Life is never certain and may be cut short at any time, just as the buck's life is cut short unexpectedly in the second stanza.
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Meter
"The Buck in the Snow" is written in free verse. Consequently, it does not follow any traditional metrical pattern. The lack of meter suits the content of the poem, which is presented as the speaker's casual, philosophical observations and musings from one particular evening.
There are, however, occasional moments of meter. For example, take the beginning of line 3, which is written in trochaic meter (meaning it consists of feet with a stressed-unstressed, DUM-da, pattern):
Standing | in the | apple- | orchard?
This phrase thus introduces a brief moment of structure into the poem, suggesting the peace and serenity of this moment in the orchard. For a moment, the world seems steady and predictable—though this predictability disappears with the second half of the line, as the deer suddenly leap away.
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Rhyme Scheme
"The Buck in the Snow" does not follow any traditional rhyme scheme, but it does frequently rhyme—and those rhymes are all on the long /oh/ sound. The rhyme scheme of the poem is as follows:
AAAAA A BACDAA
"The Buck in the Snow" asserts the power of death over life, a rather bleak and harsh idea. Life, the poem suggests, is unpredictable and, moreover, will always be conquered by death. The assonance of long, moaning /oh/ sounds in the end rhymes of so many of the lines imbues the entire poem with an appropriate sense of mournfulness.
Moreover, the setting of the poem is a bleak, wintry landscape. There are no sounds of life other than, perhaps, the wind that moves through the hemlocks, causing them to "Shift their loads a little, letting fall a feather of snow." The assonance of long /oh/ sounds may also evoke the mournful howling of the wind as it moves through this landscape. Therefore, the end rhymes of "The Buck in the Snow" enhance the imagery and mood of the poem.
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“The Buck in the Snow” Speaker
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The speaker of "The Buck in the Snow" is someone standing in a snowy wood and grappling with the fact that the buck the speaker saw leaping about shortly before the poem starts is now dead. The speaker has no name or gender. While it's possible that Millay herself is the speaker, there is no evidence to suggest this in the poem itself. Regardless, the speaker seems to feel an affinity with the natural world. In the beginning of the poem, for example, the speaker even directly addresses the "White sky."
The speaker begins the poem insisting that the buck was vibrantly alive "at the beginning of the evening," which perhaps suggests the speakers shock and disbelief upon seeing the animal's body bleeding out into the snow. The speaker, however, does not fall into despair at the sight of death. Rather, the speaker remains meditative and philosophical, seeming to come to terms with the power of death and the fragility of life at the end of the poem.
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“The Buck in the Snow” Setting
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The setting of "The Buck in the Snow" is a snowy winter landscape. The sky is white overhead and the time is sometime during the evening. There is an apple-orchard, a stone-wall, and a forest filled with hemlock trees, whose branches are loaded with snow. Deer occasionally roam through the landscape, though they remain watchful and wary, ready to flee at a moment's notice.
The scene seems peaceful, quiet, and even idyllic at first, but there are some foreboding details. The white sky, for instance, suggests a coming snow storm, while the fact that it is "evening" implies that the full darkness of night is on its way. In the second stanza, the speaker reveals that the body of a buck the speaker saw earlier in the evening now lies dead, his blood seeping into the snow. This striking image—the hot, red blood scorching the cold, white snow—reveals the danger lurking even in this quiet landscape, and implies the fragility and unpredictability of life.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Buck in the Snow”
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Literary Context
Edna St. Vincent Millay published "The Buck in the Snow" in 1928 in her collection The Buck in the Snow, and Other Poems. By this time, Millay had already achieved critical success as a writer, having won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and published five books of poetry. Millay had also established herself as a respected playwright.
Millay is renowned for her sonnets (such as "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why"). However, her poems written in traditional forms often flouted tradition by focusing on subjects that were unconventional at the time of her writing, such as women's sexuality and inner lives. Millay also frequently wrote poems in free verse, rejecting strict meter and rhyme scheme.
"The Buck in the Snow" is also clearly influenced by the imagist movement of the 1910s. Imagism, considered the beginning of the modernist literary movement, favors concrete images over the frequent abstractions of Romantic and Victorian writing. The succession of clear, concrete images in "The Buck in the Snow" is a prime example of imagist poetry. For another example, look to "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams, or Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro."
Despite being a woman publishing in a field long dominated by men, Millay was unafraid to tackle a wide range of subjects and forms. As such, Millay's life and work have influenced countless other female writers who followed her, including as Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Mary Oliver.
Historical Context
Widespread technological advancements occurred during the early 20th century, including the mass production of automobiles, radio, and other electrical appliances. The development of modern industrial cities and other advancements brought about great social changes as well. Modernism was an artistic and cultural movement that responded to these widespread social and technological changes, rejecting the traditions of the past and embodying the novelty and newness of the present.
More specifically, imagism, a movement considered to be the beginning of modernism, pushed for clear language and concrete images in artistic work. Just as modern society prized efficiency in the many technological advancements, so too did the imagists prize efficiency in their writing. The goal of any writing, the imagists believed, was clarity and concision in their language and imagery.
As such "The Buck in the Snow" embodies many of the values of imagism. Its efficiency in language and clarity in image is a stark departure from previous literary traditions, marking it clearly as a product of the new modernity of the 1920s.
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More “The Buck in the Snow” Resources
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External Resources
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A Musical Adaptation — Listen to a musical adaptation of the entire poem.
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The Poem Out Loud — Listen to a reading of the entire poem.
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Millay's Biography — Read more about Millay's life, courtesy of the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society.
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Millay's Legacy — Read about the ways in which Millay and her work are perceived today.
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A Poet's Lecture on Millay — Listen to renowned poet Eavan Boland read aloud and lecture on the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay
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