Lyric Poem · Nature

The Snow that never drifts

by Emily Dickinson

Reading room

1The Snow that never drifts —

2The transient, fragrant snow

3That comes a single time a Year

4Is softly driving now —

5So thorough in the Tree

6At night beneath the star

7That it was February's Foot

8Experience would swear —

9Like Winter as a Face

10We stern and former knew

11Repaired of all but Loneliness

12By Nature's Alibit —

13Were every storm so spice

14The Value could not be —

15We buy with contrast — Pang is good

16As near as memory —

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“The Snow that never drifts” by Emily Dickinson — quilloak.com/poems/the-snow-that-never-drifts

Quick facts

Poem: The Snow that never drifts
Poet: Emily Dickinson
Length: 16 lines
Form: Lyric Poem
Themes: Nature, Winter

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 16 lines · 4 quatrains
Line length: Mostly 6-syllable lines (trimeter length).

The poem’s silhouette — approximate syllables per line, measured from the text above. Even bars mean a measured line; ragged bars mean the poem sets its own widths.

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Text, source & rights

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Author record: Emily Dickinson1830–1886
Source record: PoetryDBThe Snow that never drifts by emily-dickinson, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 246c945131ebec22…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Lyric Poem Nature Winter

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