"The Buck in the Snow" is a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay describing the death of a male deer in the woods. The poem was first published in 1928 in the collection The Buck in the Snow.
In the work, an unidentified speaker describes seeing two deer, a male and a female, roaming in an apple orchard before running away into nearby woods. When the speaker next sees the buck, he is lying dead and bleeding in the snow. This causes the speaker to wonder about the suddenness and strangeness of death, and to imagine the doe having wandered away deeper into the woods, her gaze full of life. The poem's images of snow and winter create a mood of solemn serenity while also evoking death.
"The Buck in the Snow" is written in free verse, giving the impression of full access to the speaker's scattered thoughts as she apprehends the mysteriousness of death. Millay uses an unusual AAAAA A BACDAA rhyme scheme, with the poem's few non-rhymed lines suggesting the jarring force of a death amid the cycle of life.
