Celebrate the Winter Solstice with Poetry | National Endowment for the Arts

black text that reads the weather outside is frightful but the poems are so delightful over a photo of snowcovered fronds

Click on the name of the poem to read the full text. What's your favorite winter poem?

white text over a cyanotype of snowflakes

"snowfall makes no noise,/ falls as forgetting falls,/ flake after flake." — "The Snowfall is so Silent" by Miguel de Unamuna

white text over a photo of an older wooden sled on a snowy ground

"The paint is pretty well worn off,/ But then I take the lead;/ A dandy sled's a loiterer,/ And I go in for speed." — "A Country Boy in Winter" by Sarah Orne Jewett

black text over a photo of a couple holding hands in a snowy landscape

"... we whistle to make breath-clouds form/ and disappear, and form again, and O,/ my love, there's sun in the crook of your arm." — "Crossing the Square" by Grace Schulman

white text over a photo of a single snowflake on a blue background

"once a snowflake fell/ on my brow and i loved/ it..." — "Winter Poem" by Nikki Giovanni

white text on a photo of a snowy flat field and light blue sky with a single far away snow-covered house in the foreground

"Snow would be the easy/ way out—that softening/ sky like a sigh of relief...." — "November for Beginners" by Rita Dove

black text at top of a photo of a row of detached houses with snow in their front yeard

"Sundays too my father got up early/ and put up his clothes on in the blueblack cold...." — "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

black text across the top of a photo of a snowy landscape with mountains and evergreen trees

"Wanted: One moment in mountains/ when winter got so cold/ the oil froze before it could burn...." — "Horses in the Snow" by Roberta Hill