Twelfth Night – Louis MacNeice
Snow-happy hicks of a boy’s world –
O crunch of bull’s-eyes in the mouth,
O crunch of frost beneath the foot –
If time would only remain furled
In white, and thaw were not for certain
And snow would but stay put, stay put!
When the pillar-box wore a white bonnet –
O harmony of roof and hedge,
O parity of sight and thought –
And each flake had your number on it
And lives were round for not a number
But equalled nought, but equalled nought!
But now the sphinx must change her shape –
O track that reappears through slush,
O broken riddle, burst grenade –
And lives must be pulled out like tape
To measure something not themselves,
Things not given but made, but made.
For now the time of gifts is gone –
O boys that grow, O snows that melt,
O bathos that the years must fill –
Here is dull earth to build upon
Undecorated; we have reached
Twelfth Night or what you will … you will.
by Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)
In the Dark 
January 6, 2025 at 9:52 pm
Snow is one of the few things that, for me, can evoke the magic of childhood.
I had the privilege of being at a performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night betweeen Christmas and New Year (in the round, at the intimate Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond). Now THAT’S what I call a Christmas pantomime.
January 6, 2025 at 9:58 pm
“One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”
From “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” by Dylan Thomas.
January 6, 2025 at 10:03 pm
The second greatest Welsh poet to have that surname…
I can remember clearly the winter of 1962/3, when I was 5 years old, and the snowman I built in the back garden that lasted well into spring.
January 6, 2025 at 10:06 pm
Before my time…
January 7, 2025 at 9:36 am
“Things not given but made, but made.” keeps resonating strongly in me. In fact, an entire life might be just frozen and fixed with the snow in this poem in different lines.