“What matter how the night behaved? What matter how the north-wind raved? Blow high, blow low, not all its snow Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.”
- Date
- 1866
- Local voice
- Poetic speaker · Narrator of “Snow-Bound”
Meaning of “What matter how the night behaved? What matter…”
Against the storm outside, the remembered family hearth becomes an image of warmth, companionship and emotional shelter that the winter cannot extinguish.
Where does it come from?
Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl, around printed page 22 in the represented Project Gutenberg #20226 illustrated witness. ‘What matter how the night behaved?...’ follows Whittier's remembered family gathered around the winter hearth and is immediately followed by his later-life reflection on the family members who have died. It is autobiographically rooted poetic memory shaped by nostalgia and bereavement, not a literal rule that home or warmth removes hardship.
Why the local voice matters
Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl. The retrospective poetic narrator remembers the Whittier family hearth during a winter storm; the passage belongs to the poem’s family-memory voice.
