19th
A Special Joseph Warren Watson Poem Collected And Shared By Tony Johansen
BEAUTIFUL SNOW
Oh! The snow, the beautiful snow,
Filling the sky and the earth below,
Over the housetops, over the street,
Over the heads of people you meet.
Dancing,
Flirting,
Skimming along,Beautiful snow! It can do no wrong;
Flying to kiss a fair lady’s cheek,
Clinging to lips in frolicksome freak;
Beautiful snow from heaven above,
Pure as an angel, gentle as love!
Oh, the snow, the beautiful snow,
How the flakes gather and laugh as they go
Whirling about in maddening fun:
Chasing,
Laughing,
Hurrying by.
It lights on the face and it sparkles the eye;
And the dogs with a bark and a bound
Snap at the crystals as they eddy around;
The town is alive, and its heart is aglow,
To welcome the coming of beautiful snow.
How wild the crowd goes swaying along,
Hailing each other with humor and song;
How the gay sleighs like meteors flash by,
Bright for a moment, then lost to the eye:
Ringing,
Swinging,
Dashing they go,
Over the crest of the beautiful snow;
Snow so pure as it falls from the sky,
To be trampled in time by the crowd rushing by -
To be trampled and tracked by thousands of feet
Till it blends with the filth in the horrible street.
Once I was pure as the snow, but I fell,
Fell like the snow flakes from heaven to hell;
Fell to be trampled as filth in the street,
Fell to be scoffed, to be spit on and beat;
Pleading,
Cursing,
Dreading to die,
Selling my soul to whoever would buy;
Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread,
Hating the living and fearing the dead.
Merciful God! I have fallen so low!
And yet I was once like the beautiful snow..
Once I was fair as the beautiful snow,
With an eye like a crystal, a heart like its glow;
Once I was loved for my innocent grace—
Flattered and sought for the charms of my face!
Father,
Mother,
Sisters—all,
God and myself I have lost by my fall:
The veriest wretch that goes shivering by,
Will make a wide sweep lest I wander too night,
For all that is on or above me I know,
There is nothing so pure as the beautiful snow.
How strange it should be that this beautiful snow
Should fall on a sinner with nowhere to go!
How strange it should be when the night comes again
If the snow and the ice struck my desperate brain!
Fainting,
Freezing,
Dying alone,
Too wicked for prayer, too weak for a moan
To be heard in the streets of the crazy town,
Gone mad in the joy of snow coming down:
To be and to die in my terrible woe,
With a bed and a shroud of the beautiful snow.
- Joseph Warren Watson
.
Beautiful Snow is a prostitute’s lament. Additional verses that are not part of Watson’s original poem (included below for reference) change the meaning of the poem substantially and lead to the common interpretation that the poem is about the woman finding God in her last hours. There is little evidence that that is what Watson intended.
This poem is sometimes found attributed to Walt Whitman and sometimes as “anonymous”. Whitman apparently did discover an unattributed copy of the work and, liking it, ensured it had wide circulation, or if it was attributed, failed to include Watson’s name. The poet, Joseph Warren Watson lived a tragically short life, dying at age 23 of “consumption”. He lived in Ypsilanti, a small town near Detroit, Michigan. This is his obituary as it appeared in the January 24th, 1872, Ypsilanti Commercial which had printed some 2 dozen of Watson’s poems including “Beautiful Snow” (on the 8th January 1870).
Mr. Watson was a young man of uncommon promise. Though possessing no more than an ordinary common school education, with the exception of the knowledge he acquired by fireside reading and culture, he wrote some fine poems. He was the author of the word-renowned poem, “Beautiful Snow.” He contributed some splendid pieces to the Commercial, also in the Commercial Advertiser, Detroit, and literary journals East. Social, gentle and kind in manner, he was greatly beloved by all that knew him. Like Kirk White, he is cut off before his genius had begun to reach its full development. He was a member of the Me. E. Church. Though he loved to communicate brief catches of poetry to contribute to the amusement of gay and festive circles, he rarely entered them himself, but seemed to live as if profoundly conscious of his early death. He died after a lingering illness of that fell destroyer of so many bright ambitious, and beautiful youths - consumption. Farewell, Warren! Your pleasant, genial face will be missed in our office.
The poem Beautiful Snow is often printed with additional verses. It is difficult to determine their origin, but they are probably not by Watson as they were not part of the original 1870 printing of the poem in the Ypsilanti Commercial, although it remains possible that Watson added to the poem before his death 2 years later. I include them here for reference purposes.
Helpless and foul as the trampled snow,
SINNER, DESPAIR NOT! CHRIST STOOPETH LOW
TO RESCUE THE SOUL THAT IS LOST IN SIN,
AND RAISE IT TO LIFE AND ENJOYMENT AGAIN.
Groaning,
Bleeding,
Dying—for then,
The Crucified hung on the cursed tree!
His accents of mercy fall soft on thine ear,
“Is there mercy for me? Will He hear my weak prayer?”
O God, in the stream that for sinners did flow,
WASH ME, AND I SHALL BE WHITER THAN SNOW.