Question

please give the critical appreciation of the poem "Dust of Snow ".

Answer 1

the poetry of Robert Frost is usually associated with the landscape of the place that was his home for the longest time, that is, New England. In “Dust of Snow” as well, the landscape of New England is beautifully portrayed by the poet and it is an important element of the poem as a whole. Winters in New England are harsh. Because there are adequate heating facilities indoors, one prefers to stay at home rather than go outside in the excruciatingly cold weather. However, there sometimes arise unavoidable circumstances, in which one must go out no matter how unwilling one is to do so. Perhaps the poet was having such a day when he had composed this poem.
As he tells us in the poem, he had not been looking forward to that day and the day was not turning out any better than he had expected either. He had thought to himself that the day would in fact be going to waste. Perhaps the region was very heavily snowed in that day, and the poet was unable to do the work he had set out to do. In any case, his mood was pretty bad as he was walking by a wooded area. In that area, there were hemlock trees going. As any student of English literature will know, and as the poet himself must have had in his mind as well, hemlock is the name of the poison that had been used to kill the eminent scholar known as Socrates, whose name we find mentioned in the works of his most illustrious student Plato. Hence, the hemlock tree is generally considered to be an ill omen as it is a symbol for death. The sight of the hemlock trees could not have cheered the poet up on its own. Perhaps he didn’t even want to walk by the hemlock trees.

However, this all changed with the actions of a crow. This crow had been flying around and suddenly it decided to alight on a branch of one of the hemlock trees. Because of this sudden motion, the snowflakes that had been amassed on the branches of the hemlock tree rained down on the poet. The snowflakes were light and also a pleasant sight for sore eyes. Hence, their fall did not hurt the poet. In fact, the poet felt as if he was walking through a light precipitation of snowfall. As those who have experienced snowfall will say, this is a delightful experience.