Thomas Hardy’s skill in setting the snow-bound scene is made the more engaging by the introduction of the sparrow and the black cat.
SNOW IN THE SUBURBS
Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.
~
A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereupon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eyes,
And overturns him
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.
~
The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.
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