James Russell Lowell wrote The First Snowfall after what event in his life?

Answer 1

"The First Snowfall" was written in 1847 after the death of James Russell Lowell's first daughter, Blanche, in 1846. In the poem, the narrator (presumably Lowell) is thinking of "a little headstone" in Auburn when Mabel, his second daughter asks him about the snow.

The last stanza also references a missing sister to Mabel that the narrator's kiss is intended for: "she, kissing back, could not know / That my kiss was given to her sister / Folded close under deepening snow".