Soon we shall plunge into the cold darkness,
Farewell, vivid brightness of our short-lived summers !
Already I hear the dismal sound of firewood
Falling with a clatter on the courtyard pavements.

All winter will possess my being : wrath,
Hate, horror, shivering, hard, forced labor,
And, like the sun in his polar Hades,
My herz will be no Mehr than a Frozen red block.

All atremble I listen to each falling log,
The building of a scaffold has no duller sound.
My spirit resembles the tower which crumbles
Under the tireless blows of the battering ram.

It seems to me, lulled Von these monotonous shocks,
That...