To One Coming North

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1922

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Snow

Snow symbolizes newness and wonder as well as unfamiliarity and despair. The speaker’s ambivalence towards snow captures the complex experience of recent migrants whose own emotions may fluctuate as they leave one home in search of another. Initially, snow can be a wondrous sight for someone who has lived in a warm climate all their lives. The speaker compares snow to facets of previous experience, likening snow to playful white moths “trembling on the tropic air” (Line 2). The speaker acknowledges that snow has the potential to be enchanting, especially if individuals are using their senses, memories, and imagination to process a new sensory experience.

The second stanza captures the moment of disenchantment, as a cold, hard reality breaks the spell of snowfall. Now, snow is funereal, covering “the fields and streets” (Line 5) in an expanse of white. The blankness of snow, previously associated with freshness, now becomes a symbol of despair and hardship. Snow soon becomes symbolic of change since it melts at the start of spring in the final stanza. This final image of melting snow suggests that, ultimately, snow is life-giving and full of growth potential.

Flowers and Fields

The motif of flora, in the form of flowers and leas (which are fields, grasslands, or pastures), appears both snow-covered in the north and fecund in the south. The southern lands the migrants leave behind are filled with birdsong and lush grass, but they are also stuck in an eternal summer. The descriptions of the tree-lined avenues and grasslands of the south hints towards a darker reality; such beautiful areas were often sites of horrific violence against Black people. The sensual pleasure of the flowery lanes and leas is thus a mirage; the actual truth appears in the form of the snow-covered fields, which transform as the season change, bringing new life and hope to take the place of old norms.

The Sun

Throughout the poem, the sun is a symbol of hope and life. Even when the streets of the northern cities are covered in depressing snow, it is “a spell of heat and light” (Line 7) that thaws the chill and reminds the migrants of home. The heat and light evoke lush, vivid, and warm images for them, symbolic of the sun’s regenerative capacity. The speaker associates these images with “tender thoughts and feelings fine” (Line 11), creating an atmosphere of ease, beauty, and freedom. Even though the beauty of these images may be inextricably linked with danger, the warmth of the sun is consistently positive. In the final stanza, it transforms “the Northland” (Line 15) from a chilly, cold, and unfeeling place to a place of camaraderie, “wreathed in golden smiles” (Line 15). Thus, the sun literally and symbolically brings in the thaw that heralds spring. It symbolizes the miracle of hope, as the poem’s final line suggests.