A Reading of ‘London Snow’ by Robert Bridges

Snow in London. (Shutterstock)

An Excerpt From ‘London Snow’

When men were all asleep the snow came flying, In large white flakes falling on the city brown, Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying, Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town; Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing; Lazily and incessantly floating down and down: Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing; Hiding difference, making unevenness even, Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing. All night it fell, and when full inches seven It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness, The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven; And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare: The eye marvelled—marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;

The snow falls, flake by flake, and the familiar landscape of the city is transformed. Every year it happens like clockwork; every year we gasp as if beholding a wonder for the first time. We may shiver in our boots, and curse the ice as we slip on the street, but we cannot deny the magic of the shimmering white visitation all around us.

Robert Bridges captures this perennial scene with a marvelous eye for detail, evoking the flurries of snow as they softly, indefatigably, cover each and every building. The opening lines suggest a movement into another dimension, into the realm of dream and discovery, for it is only when “men” are “all asleep” that the snow starts to float down.

The “large white flakes” descend on the “city,” which is “brown” with grime. The snow is an agent of purification, washing everything clean—but “stealthily and perpetually settling,” it is sly and almost sinister in its relentlessness.

Bridges’s gentle patter of adjectives forms a spellbinding image of wintry enchantment, like snowflakes freezing on glass and revealing their crystalline beauty. “Deadening, muffling, stifling,” the snow seems threatening and constricting; while “veiling” the “road, roof, and railing,” it seems to proclaim their demise. But the city must undergo a death for it to be reborn.

The polyglot metropolis becomes a single radiant silence. And the diversity of buildings—so prominent in unplanned, sprawling, labyrinthine London where architectural styles spanning a thousand years are shoved up together with no rhyme or reason—becomes a single vision. “Unevenness” turns “even,” conflict turns to peace, and imperfection is banished.

A snowflake is the most vulnerable of phenomena: It falls and turns for a moment, melts, and is gone. Yet a million billion flakes bring all the hustle and bustle of cars, buses, and commuters to a strange hiatus. When it falls “all night,” nothing can prevent it from taking over.

Bridges brilliantly captures the quality of the newly settled snow in his phrase “uncompacted lightness.” This is before it has frozen and become ice, or been beaten by boots into sludge and slurry. Its “depth” is courtesy of the clouds at Christmastime; its celestial glare “unheavenly.” Everything is suspended between two realities.

Finally, everyone awakens to the new dawn. The hordes of people in the city are momentarily united in rising to greet a very different order. The grayness of winter is no more. Now there is an “unaccustomed brightness”—perhaps more dazzling than the summer in all of its gaudy glory.

When we peer out of the window and find that the snow has crept and slept upon the world once more, our eye marvels and our heart exults. If all this can change in one night, maybe our old routine life can undergo a revolution too? This is the promise of winter—and of poetry itself.

Poet Robert Bridges. (Public Domain)

Robert Bridges (1844–1930) was an English poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.

Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.