Dust of Snow Poem Class 10 English, First Flight – Summary, Explanation, Word Meanings

Dust of Snow Class 10 English, First Flight Poem

Detailed summary and explanation of “Dust of Snow” Poem along with meanings for difficult words is provided here. Also, NCERT Question and Answers are also provided to help students understand this Poem and do well in their exams.

Introduction

Dust of Snow’ by Robert Frost is a brief poem but it conveys the poet’s message coherently. The poem shows how human judgement on certain issues can be misleading. The poet depicts the crow and the hemlock tree as reasons for his changed mood and increased optimism.

Summary

This poem tells that even a simple moment has a large impact and significance. This poem stands for guiding a person who has lost all hopes and is very sad. The falling of dust of snow has changed the mood of the poet. The poet has mentioned crow and hemlock tree in this poem. Crow signifies his depressive and sorrowful mood and hemlock tree is a poisonous tree. Both of these signify that the poet was not in a good mood and so he describes the dark, depressive and bitter side of nature to present his similar mood.

In such a sad, depressive mood, the poet was sitting under a hemlock tree. A crow, sitting on the same tree, shook off the dust of snow i.e., small particles of snow that remain on the surface after the snowfall, on the poet. This simple action changed the poet’s mood. He realized that he had just wasted a part of his day repenting and being lost in sorrow. But the change in his mood made him realize that he should utilize the rest of the day in some useful activity. His sorrow was washed away by the light shower of snow dust. His spirit was revived and he got ready to utilize the rest of the day constructively.

Explanation

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Explanation : In this stanza, the poet is talking about a winter’s day when all the tree tops were covered in masses of snowflakes. The poet was walking under one such snow-covered tree. This was the North American conifer, known as the hemlock, named so because its smell resembles that of the European plant from which the poison known as hemlock was made. Hence, by virtue of its name, this tree was not one that you could associate with anything positive. However, a crow alighted on this tree suddenly, and because of that sudden motion, the mass of snowflakes atop it fell down on the poet like rain. The snowflakes were so light and miniscule that the poet thought they looked like white and immaculate dust particles (if indeed, dust particles could ever be white). This shower of snowflakes from the hemlock tree is evidently the subject matter of this poem, since it touched the poet in some way.

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Explanation : In this stanza, the poet explains to us exactly in what way the shower of snowflakes had an effect on him. He says that it changed his mood. That is to say, he had been in a sullen or despairing mood, and the snowflakes falling on him, all of a sudden, gladdened his heart. In addition to this, there was another effect that the shower of snowflakes had on the poet. He says that, that particular day was one that he had not been looking forward to, and in fact, it was not going too well either. He had decided, in his mind, that that particular day would go waste. However, the shower of dust-like snow on his shoulder changed his mind. It made him feel that the day had not been a complete waste. At least, some part of that day had been pleasant, since it had given him a new experience that he could treasure.

Difficult Word Meanings

Word	Meaning
dust of snow	particles of snow
hemlock tree	a poisonous plant (tree) with small white flowers
mood	a state of mind
rued	held in regret