The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.

These lines open John Greenleaf Whittier’s long narrative poem “Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl” (1866). Written late in Whittier’s career, the poem looks back to his rural New England childhood and the way a severe snowstorm gathered the household together in enforced stillness. Published just after the American Civil War, “Snow-Bound” was widely read as a nostalgic, domestic counterpoint to national trauma and change, and it became one of Whittier’s most popular and financially successful works. The quoted stanza sets the wintry scene at the outset, establishing the muted light and somber atmosphere that precede the storm and the family’s retreat indoors.

Whittier uses the bleakness of a short December day to create an emotional key for the poem: light itself seems diminished, “cheerless,” and “darkly circled,” as if nature were mourning. The comparison—noon giving “a sadder light than waning moon”—reverses expectations by making midday less heartening than night, emphasizing winter’s power to drain color and vitality from the world. This atmospheric opening does more than describe weather; it prepares for the poem’s central movement from external desolation to internal warmth, memory, and communal intimacy, suggesting that human fellowship and recollection can counterbalance a harsh, dimmed landscape.