Primary sourceBook
The Winter's Walk
Samuel Johnson
A short poem by Samuel Johnson about the bleak winter landscape and the speaker's inner moods, ending with a request to a beloved for comfort.
A short poem by Johnson that shows his verse style and his use of personal address.
About this source
What it is
This is a short poem by Samuel Johnson, listed on Wikisource under his individual poems. It describes a winter walk with a companion, moving from the bare hills and leafless groves to the speaker's inner feelings of despair and false hope. It ends by asking Stella to take the speaker into her arms and shelter him from life's troubles.
Why it matters
The poem shows Johnson's use of the regular rhyme and metre of eighteenth-century verse to express strong feeling. It reveals how the writers of his time often linked the seasons with the moods of the human heart, and how a poet could address a named person directly in a poem.
Look closer
- How does the poem use the winter landscape to describe the speaker's feelings?
- Who is Stella, and what does the speaker ask her to do?
- What does the poem leave out about the speaker's own life or about the season beyond winter?
This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Samuel Johnson on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.
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