The Snow Drop
By Vincent Bourne
Annotations by Abby Army/JB
mounted on paperboard, 1883, Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick
Gallery, Washington, D.C.
With head reclined the Snow-Drop see, The first of Flora’s progenie, In virgin modesty appear, To hail and welcome in the year! Fearless of winter, it defies The rigor of inclement skies, And early hastens forth to bring The tidings of approaching spring. Though simple in its dress, and plain, It ushers in a beauteous train, And claims, how gaudy e’er they be, The merit of precendencie. All that the gay or sweet compose, The pink, the violet and the rose, In fair succession as they blow, Their glories to the Snow-Drop owe.
Bourne, Vincent. “The Snow-Drop.” The Knickerbocker; or New York Monthly Magazine 31, no. 1 (March 1848): 219.
Contexts
Vincent Bourne spent his entire career as a teacher at Westminster School, London, which he attended as a child. He was dedicated to being a Latin poet and continued to be published and translated posthumously. Despite his volume of work, little is known about him.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
progenie: Offspring, issue, children; descendants.
precedence (precedency): Superiority, pre-eminence; primacy.
Resources for Further Study
- For more of Bourne’s poems, many of which he wrote in Latin, see The Poetical Works of Vincent Bourne. The volume includes a brief biography and two of Bourne’s letters.
