Dust of Snow · Class 10 English · First Flight Poetry: 60 flashcards

Robert Frost.

Eight lines — two stanzas of four very short lines, about thirty-four words in all.

A crow, moving on a branch of a hemlock tree, shakes loose the snow lying there, and it falls on the speaker standing beneath.

Not a snowfall — it is the fine, loose, powdery snow already lying on the branches, shaken off and scattered. The word 'dust' keeps the event small and almost weightless.

A poisonous plant or tree with small white flowers.

Held in regret. It is the last word of the poem.

The whole of it is a single sentence. The first stanza contains no main verb at all — it gives only the subject, and the verb arrives in line five.

Because the reader has to hold the first stanza in mind and carry it across the stanza break before the meaning completes — which mirrors the experience the poem describes.

It gives the speaker's heart a change of mood, and it saves some part of a day he had rued.

Because the poem says some part of a day. Frost is careful about how much he claims — not joy but a change of mood, not the day but part of it.

Why the day had been regretted, what the speaker was doing under the tree, whether anyone else was present, and how long the change lasted.

Because the reader supplies the missing grief from their own experience. If the poem named a particular sorrow it would stop fitting everybody.

No. It is simply a bird moving on a branch. Nature in this poem does not comfort anybody on purpose — something happens, and a man happens to be changed by it.

The lines are very short, mostly four or five syllables, so the poem moves quickly and lightly and then stops dead at the full stop after the last word.

A remark that there is always a larger significance, and that a little thing touches a larger thing.

Modestly and genuinely: a day he had been regretting was partly redeemed, and his heart was given a change of mood. He does not claim to have become happy.

The textbook's own question names a maple, an oak and a pine — more conventionally beautiful trees than a hemlock.

Because the event is small, the claim is small and the poem is small — all three match, so nothing feels exaggerated.

After the very last word. Everything before it is one continuous sentence.

'Rued' — a short, blunt, old-fashioned word for regret. It is the heaviest word in the poem and it is left ringing at the end.

How Frost presents nature in this poem — with three prompts about the birds poems usually name, what a hemlock is, and whether the crow and hemlock stand for joy or sorrow.

Singers with pleasant associations — the nightingale, the skylark, the cuckoo, the dove. A crow is not among them.

It is black, harsh-voiced and a scavenger, and in a great deal of folklore it is a bird of ill omen — almost the opposite of a poetic bird.

Because the textbook glosses it as a poisonous plant or tree with small white flowers. Frost could have chosen a maple, an oak or a pine, and chose the tree associated with poison.

Because it matches the speaker's mood on a day he had rued. Nothing in the scene is trying to cheer him, which is exactly why the change of mood is believable when it comes.

The snow — clean, white and weightless — is shaken loose out of the darkness itself, by a crow, from a poisonous tree. The lift comes from where nothing good was expected.

Sorrow, ill omen and the sense of a day gone wrong. The dust of snow they release stands for the small, unlooked-for lift that can come out of such a day.

Not as beautiful and not as kind — as ordinary, slightly grim, and completely uninterested in the man standing beneath the tree. It does him good by accident, which is more honest than a sunset comforting a sad heart on purpose.

abab cdcd — alternate rhyme in each stanza. Crow rhymes with snow and me with tree; then heart with part and mood with rued.

Each rhyme is held back a line before its partner arrives, so the ear is pulled forward to the line after next — which suits a poem that refuses to stop before the last word. Couplets would have closed every two lines.

Very short lines of two stresses each, four or five syllables long. Read aloud, the whole poem takes about fifteen seconds.

Almost every word has one syllable. There are no ornaments, no unusual words and not one adjective of praise — nothing is called lovely, beautiful or bright.

The running-on of the sense past the end of a line — here past the end of almost every line, and past the stanza break as well.

It is what allows eight chopped-up lines to behave as one continuous sentence, and it pulls against the regular rhyme so that the poem never becomes sing-song.

A long 'o' through crow, snow and mood, and a repeated short 'e' in me and tree — sounds that quietly tie the short lines to one another.

Because the images suggest gloom rather than standing for named things in a code. Turning them into a fixed key makes the poem tidier and smaller than it is.

That he chooses unpoetic, ill-omened images rather than beautiful ones; that nature acts without meaning to, so the lift is accidental; and that the poem's power comes from the good thing being released by the dark things.

Crow, me, snow and tree — giving the abab pattern.

Heart, mood, part and rued — giving the cdcd pattern.

The forward pull. Couplets close every two lines like little doors, while the alternating rhyme keeps the ear moving on — which is what a single-sentence poem needs.

That the poem presents a moment which seems simple but has a larger significance — with Frost's own remark that a little thing touches a larger thing.

That an event too small to be worth telling anybody about can be enough to change how a person feels, and therefore matters.

Because we normally measure events by their size. Frost's point is that the scale of a cause and the scale of its effect need not match at all.

By refusing to arrange the scene. The day is already rued, the bird is a crow, the tree is poisonous and the weather is cold — nothing has been set up to make anybody feel better.

Because Frost asks for so little — a change of mood, some part of a day — the reader grants him everything. A bigger claim would invite disbelief.

None. There is no line telling us to look for beauty in small things, to be grateful, or to cheer up. It reports the event and the effect and stops.

Because advice invites argument and a report does not. A poem ending with instructions would be easy to dismiss; this one leaves the reader to draw a conclusion, and most readers draw a generous one.

Attention. The crow, the snow and the tree do nothing deliberately; the only active thing in the poem is a man noticing what has just happened to him.

Brushed the snow off, muttered at the bird and walked on with the day unchanged. The difference between the two is attention, not luck.

No. Nature in it is indifferent — the crow is not comforting anybody. What the poem values is the human capacity to be changed by something that was not meant for us at all.

Whether you have ever felt depressed or hopeless, and whether you have experienced a similar moment that changed your mood that day.

Because a poem of this kind is verified by memory rather than by argument. Most readers can name a moment that rescued a bad day without being able to explain why.

In 40–50 words: say what happened — a crow shook snow from a hemlock onto the speaker — and what it did: gave his heart a change of mood, and rescued part of a day he had written off he had rued. Then stop.

In 100–120 words, as five short paragraphs: the event; the deliberately gloomy images and why they were chosen; the indifference of the crow; the restraint of the claim, quoting 'some part of a day'; and the form — one sentence, abab cdcd, two-stress lines, plain monosyllables.

A short accurate quotation, because it proves you read the poem; and one sentence about form, because most answers contain none.

Because it closes on the trouble rather than on the relief. The hope is real, but the poem never pretends the bad day has gone away.

Nothing in it is called beautiful, and there is no description of scenery at all. The bird is a crow and the tree is poisonous.

It teaches nothing. It records what happened to one man on one afternoon, and any conclusion is the reader's own.

Very little — 'me', 'my' and 'I' between them occupy only a few words. The speaker takes up almost no room in his own poem.

Happy, sad, beautiful and nature — none of them is used, although the poem is about all four.