Snow-Storm, The, is a poem by the American philosopher, poet, critic, and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson was the most eminent of the American Transcendentalists, a group of thinkers who came to prominence in the 1830's and 1840's. The Transcendentalists believed in the presence of God in nature. They emphasized the role of the individual in perceiving things spiritual in the surrounding world.