First Snow in Alsace by Richard Wilbur: Summary and Critical Analysis
First Snow in Alsace is one of the formal, metaphysical poems of Wilbur in which he has described the coming of the first snow of the year, and enlarged the meaning of the incident to make it symbolically suggest the transformation of things as a terrible reality of war and hostility envelops them. The eight tercets and a final concluding line mainly describe the coming of snow, but from the very first line the poet uses many conceits and metaphors that are suggestive of the symbolic meaning of the coming of the snow.