Fire and Snow
Nora Hopper Chesson
1871 to 1906
Track 1
Reconstruct the poem by dragging each line into its correct position. Your goal is to reassemble the original poem as accurately as possible. As you move the lines, you'll see whether your arrangement is correct, helping you explore the poem's flow and meaning. You can also print out the jumbled poem to cut up and reassemble in the classroom. Either way, take your time, enjoy the process, and discover how the poet's words come together to create something truly beautiful.
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One may sit by the wild-fire, and half forget
For my place in a heart that to-night is cold.
"What pain is it, colleen, you'd win again
"What of the night, colleen, what of the night?"
Keeps shut my lips that would fain make moan,
But wildfire signals to ships at sea —
But on one dear hearth that I used to know
Oh, sea-blue eyes of you, yellow head,
Why sit you silent the while you spin,
And dearest is sorrow that's half a sin —
Oh, mother, mother, one thing alone
"What of the night, colleen, what of the night?"
Oh, they must walk soft though my heart go bare.
"What bird is it, colleen, that cries so shrill?"
The fire is quenched with the drifted snow.
For a kind hand slipped from my clinging hold,
The hands that parted, the lips that met:
By the fire that's quenched not of wind or rain?
Oh, never a star dares show its light,
Tis I; and I cry for a kind voice still —
You passed ere the flowers on the thorn were dead:
What use of wailing? more use to spin,
And dree my weird betwixt snow and snow.
And I give God thanks, though the ways be white,
Is the heart that has never a pain to hold.
And the ghostly feet that I hear on the stair,
Oh, fires are red and the snows are white:
It is that alone in the night I go
As if your sorrow were half a sin?"
That His snows fall only on me to-night.
One may warm one's grief there; for deathly cold
And Miscann Many's the fire for me.