Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl is a long narrative poem by American poet John Greenleaf Whittier first published in 1866.

The poem, presented as a series of stories told by a family amid a snowstorm, was extremely successful and popular in its time.

The father tells of his experiences eating, hunting, and fishing with Native Americans and others near Lake Memphremagog in Vermont, Great Marsh in Salisbury, Massachusetts, the Isles of Shoals, and elsewhere.

The schoolmaster, son of a poor man who took odd jobs to become independent, sings and tells of his time at Dartmouth College.

A week goes by since the storm and the family re-reads their books, including poetry and "one harmless novel", before the local paper is finally delivered, which allows them to read and think about warmer places.

[7] As early as 1870, the poem was recognized as the crucial work which changed Whittier's career and ensured a lasting reputation.

"It describes scenes and manners which the rapid changes of our national habits will soon have made as remote from us as if they were foreign or ancient," he wrote.

"[10] An anonymous reviewer in the Monthly Religious Magazine in March 1866 predicted the poem "will probably be read at every fireside in New England, reread, and got by heart, by all classes, from old men to little children, for a century to come".

[11] In its period, the poem was second in popularity only to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha and was published well into the twentieth century.

[12] By the time it was published, homes like the Whittier family homestead were examples of the fading rural past of the United States.

[14] Scholar Angela Sorby suggests the poem focuses on whiteness and its definition, ultimately signaling a vision of a biracial America after the Civil War.