With less people working the area around is quieter, this emphasised with the following “the ear harkened, the busy morning cries came thin and spare”. Contrast is used there, normal loudness and today’s quiet scenery.
Another poem shows the enjoyable activities winter brings, but also shows the inconvenience. The owl sings “merry note”, “roasted crabs hiss in the bowl”. Then you have the annoyance of these freezing temperatures “milk comes frozen”, and the illnesses that come too “Marian’s nose looks red and raw”. More onomatopoeia with hiss” and alliteration.
In “London Snow” the boys on their way to school are amazed by the beauty but also playing very boisterously. The snow is shown to be looking exquisite and is often compared; it is said to be like a “crystal manna”. They are “dazzled” by the “white mossed wonder”. The children concentrate a lot on the fun side to it in most of the poems, with one exception. To start the children find the perfectly crisp untouched white snow, “sparkling beams awake the stir of the day”. Their mind then turn to the other side of snow, the new winter activities created. “Tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing”. Their play is quite rough and tiring, “rioted in a drift, plunging.” Another exhilarating activity used in a poem is the fast paced ice-skating. They “hissed” along, across the “polished ice”, onomatopoeia is used to describe the sounds as they “flew” past. There is a contrast between the warmth inside that they were told to return to but didn’t and the icy cold outside that they stayed with. Several similes were also used, “like an untired horse” and “all shod with steel”. Horses were used then and throughout the poem to make a feeling of chase and the hunt. This comparison shows the element of fox hunting because of the ways the boys are following each other. Their noise created abnormal distorted sounds over the hill “resounding horn” and “alien sound”. The sounds are like “din bellowing from the west” a simile used there. Another part to the snow is the effect on younger children, questions they ask like how does the snowfall. According to a young girl, there is a great “sadness” because of a “great white bird” has been killed. She cries and sighs through the dusky brightness. This sadness may be of a past experience, the poet may have been the “child crying”.
The winter in all poems is portrayed in many different ways, possibly reflect the poets own views on winter. One way this is shown is like a strategic military strike carefully planned to disrupt the town and take control. That it does, “flying” to the ground while the town sleeps. It arrives “stealthily”, “perpetually lying”; personification is used to add atmosphere.
