The Full Text of “The Snow Man”
1One must have a mind of winter
2To regard the frost and the boughs
3Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
4And have been cold a long time
5To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
6The spruces rough in the distant glitter
7Of the January sun; and not to think
8Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
9In the sound of a few leaves,
10Which is the sound of the land
11Full of the same wind
12That is blowing in the same bare place
13For the listener, who listens in the snow,
14And, nothing himself, beholds
15Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
The Full Text of “The Snow Man”
1One must have a mind of winter
2To regard the frost and the boughs
3Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
4And have been cold a long time
5To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
6The spruces rough in the distant glitter
7Of the January sun; and not to think
8Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
9In the sound of a few leaves,
10Which is the sound of the land
11Full of the same wind
12That is blowing in the same bare place
13For the listener, who listens in the snow,
14And, nothing himself, beholds
15Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
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“The Snow Man” Introduction
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Wallace Stevens's "The Snow Man" was first published in Poetry magazine in 1921 and then appeared in Stevens's influential debut collection Harmonium (1923). Gazing on a bleak winter landscape of snow-covered trees, the poem's speaker asks what it would take to experience such a harsh environment and not "think / Of any misery in the sound of the wind"—in other words, to witness the scene without personifying it or reading it symbolically. Seeing the world objectively, this poem suggests, is a difficult feat—and one that might reveal there's "nothing" in the world without a human perspective.
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“The Snow Man” Summary
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You'd have to have a wintery mind to look at the frost and the branches of pine-trees all caked in snow; you'd have to spend a lot of time being cold to look at juniper trees with their coats of ice, or the spruce trees glinting in the January sunlight, without perceiving something bleak and depressing in the sound of the wind or of a few falling leaves. That sound is the sound of the countyside, traveling on that same wind, blowing through this same barren environment where a listener, listening in the snow, stops having an identity—and thus doesn't see anything that isn't there, seeing only that nothing is there at all.
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“The Snow Man” Themes
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Objective Reality vs. Subjective Experience
"The Snow Man" questions whether it's possible to see the world objectively rather than through a lens of subjective emotion. The poem's speaker discusses the difficulty of observing a winter scene without personifying it as miserable and unforgiving. To see the scene as it is, and not as it feels, a person would have to relinquish their identity, take on an empty "mind of winter," and become a "snow man"—that is, just another part of the landscape. Of course, that's a tall order! People’s perceptions, this poem suggests, might always alter (or even co-create) what they encounter. However, the effort to step away from automatic interpretations and judgments can offer a different—and worthwhile—perspective on the world.
Describing a winter scene, the speaker suggests that it's almost impossible to see it without symbolic and emotional associations—for instance, to look at the bleak landscape without hearing "misery" in the "sound of the wind." In other words, people personify nature without even thinking about it, interpreting a wintry environment as harsh because it makes them cold, or as unforgiving because it doesn't show many signs of life. The poem thus suggests that people usually filter the world through their own feelings and have trouble seeing the natural world as something other than human.
To get rid of that lens and see the world as it really is, the poem suggests, people would have to develop a "mind of winter": that is, a mind that’s at one with the wintry landscape rather than standing apart observing it. To get to this state would require being "cold a long time," sinking deep into the wintry world outside of oneself, almost becoming a "snow man"—just another part of the landscape, not a person looking at the landscape. To have a "mind of winter" also suggests a kind of zen-like emptiness; a true "snow man" would shed his judgments (e.g., this is bleak) just as a tree in winter might shed its leaves.
To see the world objectively, however, is also to see that it's "nothing" without human interpretation. Even the idea of "winter" depends on human perception and language. People's interpretations of the world thus both obstruct the direct experience of reality and create meaning. The speaker makes this point at the end of the poem when they observe that seeing the world as it really is means seeing "nothing that is not there and the nothing that is." In other words, if you see "nothing that is not there," you don’t project human emotion onto the environment. But you also see "the nothing that is"—that is, you see nothingness, discovering that the world doesn't have an inherent meaning without human interpretation.
Though subjective perspective is thus hard to escape, the poem implies that people can at least become more conscious of the lenses through which they look at the world. One can try to tune in to the world on its own terms and experience the winter (or anything, for that matter) without jumping to conclusions about what it all means. That is, an observer might make an effort not to project human emotions onto the world, even if, ultimately, this might be a nigh-impossible task. Making that effort, the poem suggests, can offer a fresh and strange perspective.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Snow Man”
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Lines 1-3
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;"The Snow Man" considers what it would be like to look at the world objectively—and in particular, to observe a winter scene without personifying it as bleak or miserable. In other words, the poem wonders if it's possible to separate objective reality from subjective experience, to tune into the world as it is rather than imposing emotions or symbolism onto what one sees.
The speaker who will explore this idea cuts an appropriately distant and objective figure. Rather than describing their own experience, they start the poem standing at a remove from what they see, simply observing that:
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;The impersonal pronoun "one" suggests that the speaker is dealing with matters that, in their opinion, are relevant to everybody. So does the poem's title. The word "snowman"—meaning the familiar carrot-nosed snow sculpture—typically doesn't use a space between "snow" and "man." From the beginning, then, the poem hints that it's not about Frosty, but about "man" in a wider sense—that is, human beings and the human condition.
Anyone, this speaker says, would need a "mind of winter" in order to see the icy trees clearly. This rich, mysterious idea might suggest more than one thing:
- A "mind of winter" could be a mind so in tune with this particular season that it's at one with the environment. Such a mind, presumably, wouldn't interpret winter as harsh or unforgiving, but just as itself, winter being winter.
- A "mind of winter" could also be a Zen-like state of non-judgment. This mind, like the landscape the speaker describes, might be a bare, sparse environment, in which thoughts like winter symbolizes death aren't even present. If perceiving with the human mind is like looking at something through a lens, this "mind of winter" attempts to remove the lens.
In this first stanza, the hypothetical "mind of winter" observes pine trees covered with frost and snow. That's all it does—"regard" them, rather than associate them with human emotions or ideas. Looking at the world so carefully and unjudgmentally, this poem will suggest, might be a near-impossible feat.
The speaker will develop their ideas about perception and reality over the course of a single long sentence, carefully shaped into five tercets (or three-line stanzas) of unmetered, unrhymed free verse. In this neat, compact shape, the speaker's voice feel careful, measured, and still as the snowy scene.
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Lines 4-7
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; -
Lines 7-12
and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place -
Lines 13-15
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
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“The Snow Man” Symbols
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The Snowy Trees
The poem's speaker might reject the idea that anything in this poem is symbolic! The poem wonders if it's possible to look at a winter landscape and not ascribe symbolic meaning to it—for instance, by resisting the idea that icy, chilly stillness automatically suggests "misery."
But fittingly (and ironically), the layers of ice in this winter scene might symbolize just such layers of potentially misguided meaning. The trees here are "crusted with snow" or "shagged with ice." Beneath the frosty rime, though, they're all evergreens—that is, they never shed their needles, but stay green and lively all year round. A casual observer might look at the scene and think, There's no life here. But their initial impression would be wrong. In other words, an automatic interpretation conceals another truth—just the process the poem describes.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
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Winter
In order to perceive this wintry scene and not invest it with symbolism or emotion, the speaker declares, "One must have a mind of winter." Ironically enough, though, even the idea of a "mind of winter" draws on winter symbolism to suggest what such a mind might be like: empty, (emotionally) cold, and still. In other words, to see the world objectively, the mind would have to shed its thoughts, feelings, and associations like a tree loses its leaves. The poem thus uses winter symbolism at the exact same moment as it describes trying to escape it.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
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“The Snow Man” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Imagery
"The Snow Man" uses two types of imagery to bring the winter scene to life on the page.
In the first two stanzas, the speaker describes the winter landscape:
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; [...]
These lines conjure up a wilderness of frozen evergreens: "crusted" and "shagged," they're dramatically engulfed in ice. The imagery paints a severe-but-beautiful picture that subtly challenges the reader not to automatically personify this scene as miserable. Note, too, how delicate sound work makes the images all the more evocative (e.g. the light /t/ consonance that evokes the "distant glitter" of sunlight on ice).
From line 8, the poem switches to auditory (sound-based) imagery. The speaker describes:
the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,Here, the speaker presents the sound of the wind in the plainest possible terms—it's just the "sound of the wind," audible only because of the movement of "a few leaves," creating the only "sound of the land." This shift away from the vivid language of the first two stanzas again challenges the reader, because it's hard to read these stark lines without imagining "misery in the sound of the wind."
In different ways, both types of imagery challenge the reader not to make judgements about this winter world, instead simply seeing and hearing it alongside the speaker. The true "snow man," the speaker suggests, doesn't think of the scene as beautiful or harsh—or as anything at all.
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
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Personification
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Repetition
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"The Snow Man" 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.
- Crusted
- Behold
- Junipers
- Shagged
- Spruce
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Covered in a way that gives the appearance of a hard outer layer.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Snow Man”
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Form
"The Snow Man" is built from five three-line stanzas (also known as tercets)—all of which form just one long, complex sentence, its clauses linked with semicolons. Together with a distant, almost abstract tone, this shape makes the speaker sound as if they're carefully working through a complex philosophical issue (which they are!).
Given that the poem is all one sentence, it's notable that it uses stanza breaks at all. Perhaps that little bit of extra white space in between stanzas evokes the winter landscape: the snow-white page stands in for the bare, stark environment.
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Meter
"The Snow Man" is written in free verse, so it doesn't use any regular pattern of meter. However, the poem moves along at a pretty steady, even pace. Each neat stanza uses three lines of about the same length, making the speaker's observations feel unhurried and thoughtful and evoking the winter scene's stillness.
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Rhyme Scheme
Written in free verse, "The Snow Man" doesn't have a rhyme scheme. Perhaps rhyme would feel too ordered, too human, for a poem that imagines transcending the human perspective. The snow man himself—that is, the "listener" who appears in the final stanza—seems to take winter just as it is, not trying to impose any judgment or interpretation on what he observes; a rhyme scheme might be just such an imposition.
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“The Snow Man” Speaker
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At first glance, the reader might assume the speaker is the "snow man" of the title—but that "snow man" in fact seems to be the "listener" who appears at the end of the poem. Instead, "The Snow Man" has an anonymous speaker who remains a mystery to the reader. Everything the speaker says forms one long sentence that begins with the impersonal pronoun "One," making the poem feel general and abstract, far from intimate.
Stevens's poems of this period often take a similar approach. But the speaker's authorial distance is especially important here. The poem asks how possible it is to perceive the world without projecting emotion or symbolism onto it (e.g., automatically personifying winter as harsh or unforgiving). The speaker's remove makes the poem feel objective, even if ultimately it does have a perspective. After all, just who exactly witnesses and describes the "listener" as they "behold" this winter scene?
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“The Snow Man” Setting
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"The Snow Man" describes a winter scene. Snow covers the pine trees, the junipers are "shagged with ice," and the spruces glint in the "distant glitter/ Of the January sun." A cold wind blows through the woods.
While the poem brings this scene to life with vivid, precise imagery, it expressly avoids personifying the landscape. It doesn't say, for example, that there is a harsh wind blowing across the land. Instead, the poem points out how difficult it is to "behold" this environment without imposing emotions or symbolism onto it. Human perspective, this poem suggests, automatically projects all kinds of thoughts, feelings, and associations on the world—but the poem's speaker is interested in what the world looks like when people try their hardest not to do that.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Snow Man”
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Literary Context
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was one of the most important American poets of the 20th century. He is generally considered part of the modernist tradition, though his poetry is so distinctive that it doesn't really fit in with the work of other modernist figures like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.
Instead, critics often link Stevens with Romantic writers like William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Although Stevens lived almost a century after these writers, he shares many of their concerns, most particularly the belief that each individual's imagination shapes their experience of the world. Like many of the Romantics, Stevens was interested in using poetry not just to exercise his imagination, but to work through his ideas. In this, he resembles Hart Crane, another modernist poet with Romantic leanings.
"The Snow Man," one of Stevens's most famous and enduring poems, was published in his debut collection Harmonium (1923). While not an instant success, Harmonium is now considered one of the most influential collections of 20th-century poetry. Other poems in the book also explore the role that perspective plays in shaping reality—or at least the experience of reality. Check out "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" for another classic example. In his book The Necessary Angel, Stevens addressed the importance of the subjective human lens directly, saying: "The world about us would be desolate except for the world within us."
Historical Context
The poem was published in Stevens's 1923 collection Harmonium, which appeared between the two world wars. But Stevens's poetry is never that concerned with the context in which it was written; it prefers to construct a world of its own. In a way, "The Snow Man" is an attempt to do away with a human context altogether!
Stevens famously lived a quiet life in suburban Connecticut, where he worked as an insurance executive and wrote poetry by night (or, as the story goes, composed it in his head on his stroll to work). The contemplative reveries of Stevens's poetry have often been linked to the fact that he was able to live a life of quiet prosperity, insulated from many of the tumultuous events of his time.
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More “The Snow Man” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
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Wallace Stevens's Legacy — Read an article celebrating Stevens's life and work.
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More of Stevens's Poetry — Take a look at an electronic edition of Stevens's important 1923 book Harmonium, in which "The Snow Man" was collected.
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Bloom on Stevens — Listen to a lecture on Stevens by the influential literary critic Harold Bloom.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Wallace Stevens
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