Snowdrop

To view more poems I have examined, click HERE.

Snowdrop

by Ted Hughes

Now is the globe shrunk tight
Round the mouse’s dulled wintering heart.
Weasel and crow, as if moulded in brass,
Move through an outer darkness
Not in their right minds,
With the other deaths. She, too, pursues her ends,
Brutal as the stars of this month,
Her pale head heavy as metal.

____________________________

Snowdrop is an eight line poem without a clear rhyme scheme or meter, surrounding the subjects of grief, brutality, survival, and death. The poem is open to a lot of interpretation.

Lines 1 and 2:

Now is the globe shrunk tight
Round the mouse’s dulled wintering heart.

These two lines are interesting in juxtaposition. Line 1 refers to “the globe,” presenting an all-encompassing image, but the second lines shrinks our perspective to a creature synonymous with being small. By playing these two images against each other, in addition to adding the description of “dulled” and “wintering heart” the mouse seems to be either hibernating or near death. (Mice don’t actually hibernate, but the idea that they do is relatively common and could have been what the poet had in mind.)

What is meant in the first line by “shrunk tight?” The Speaker seems to be presenting an image of compression, with a great weight upon a small creature, with dull and wintering both serving as adjectives that add to that image, conveying to the Reader a lack of life, or at least the significant struggle of life to persist. If we apply the title to the scene, we might imagine a mouse slowly being buried by the falling snow. In that sense, the “globe shrunk tight” around the mouse fits very well.

Lines 3 through 6a:

Weasel and crow, as if moulded in brass,
Move through an outer darkness
Not in their right minds,
With the other deaths.

In these lines the poem changes perspective away from the mouse, toward new characters – “Weasel and crow.”

With the way that these two are described, it is not clear whether or not they are alive. Saying that they are “moulded in brass” indicates a hardness, which fits with the coldness in the title and the prior line’s use of “wintering.” The weasel and crow are active in a way that the mouse is not, in that they “move.” They are also said to be “not in their right mind” which implies life, but damaged life.

On the other hand, their movement is said to be “through an outer darkness,” a phrase which typically symbolizes death. Line 6a’s reference “with the other deaths” could mean that they died also, but are handling it differently than others who died. They might be upset over the death around them, form the winter, generally. Outer darkness might also apply well if we imagine them being described vis a vis thet perspective of the dead mouse, buried by falling snow.

We can blend the ideas that the weasel and crow are both alive and dead, by interpreting these lines to be a metaphor for grief. When someone we know dies, often it feels as if a part of us dies with them. In our grief, we might also not be in our “right minds.” Perhaps the weasel and the crow grieved the mouse.

It should also be noted that the weasel and crow are both animals that eat mice. Would they lament a meal becoming lost beneath snow? Perhaps they would, especially if compared to “the other deaths” which may have occurred in view, and not in darkness.

Lines 6b through 8:

She, too, pursues her ends,
Brutal as the stars of this month,
Her pale head heavy as metal.

It is not immediately clear who “She” is. I’ll offer a couple of possible interpretations.

A “snowdrop” is a type of winter flower. Therefore, “she” might refer to the flower. If we assume that this is so, then the image presented in the lines that follow shows us a flower described as “brutal” and with a “head heavy as metal.” The snowdrop sounds like a fighter, rather than something delicate or beautiful. We might view the poem as a whole as an attempt to invert the perception of the beautiful and delicate flower into a hardened, strong, survivor.

I want to note that the stars are also described as “brutal.” This adds to the argument that the poet is attempting to invert stereotypes. If we see how a beautiful delicate flower might also be a brutal, strong, survivor, how does “brutal” apply to the stars? Each of those lights in the night sky – also synonymous with love and beauty – exist in a vast cold brutal vacuum. They must themselves be brutal to survive.

There is another way to read the final lines. The capitalization of “She” and the lack of species description might also imply that the perspective now is a human woman. Maybe the Speaker wanted us to think of both a woman and the flower, or perhaps he wanted us to compare them.

The use of “too” at the end of line six links her (flower or woman) with the two animals from the previous lines, and we see that connection continue in the rest of the poem. She is active, just as the weasel and crow are. We were told they moved, and that she “pursues her ends.” The weasel and crow, are described “as if moulded in brass,” and “Not in their right minds,” and she is described similarly, “Her pale head heavy as metal.” Thus Line 8 seems to blend both the descriptions given to the weasel and crow, presenting the flower/woman as both hardened and not in her right mind. If she reflects the weasel and crow, we might also then view line 7 as another parallel, this time with line 4. If we imagine “she” as a woman, perhaps she is beautiful and surviving in hard times, just as the snowdrop flower does.

There are a few ways then to interpret what is happening here (if we imagine “She” is a human.) She might be grieving a loss, as we might interpret that as what the weasel and crow were doing. She might just be trying to survive a hard winter – like the mouse, weasel, and crow. Alternatively, she might be herself dead or dying. A hard heavy head could describe one who is dead.

Perhaps the point of the piece is that grief and death are simultaneously similar and far apart. We might also see that in both nature and human grief, beauty can survive despite hard and difficult environment. Maybe we should even think of grief and beauty as tough and hardened, rather than as delicate.

In the Speaker’s choice to use the word “ends” rather than “end,” in line 6, we see how close that the brutal struggle of grief and survival, and death, really are. We also see how far apart those two states are. The slight variation (ends vs end) changes the meaning entirely. “Ends” implies activity and purpose, whereas “end” would have clarified death and finality.

This poem says potentially quite a lot, about large deep subjects, in very few words.