When winter invites you to general coziness, when a walk in the great outdoors becomes a very special experience in snow and cold, or when the city is immersed in a blissful silence, then it takes the right words to be able to express this very special winter feeling. To give you some ideas, we let some great poets have their say in the winter special, who can do this better than we can.
Winter
When leaves on eaves are far lost,
.So the white falls down on the valleys,
But shining is the day from the high sunstrale,
It shines the festival to the cities from the gates.
It is the quiet of nature, the field's silence.
It is like man's spirituality, and higher show.
The differences themselves, that to high image.
Show themselves nature, instead with spring's mildness.
Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843)
Winter
Snowy lies all around the world,
I have nothing that makes me glad,
Forsaken stands a tree in the field,
Has long since scattered its leaves.
The wind only goes by silent night
and shakes the tree.
Then it stirs its tops gently
And speaks as in a dream.
He dreams of future springtime,
Of green and spring rushes.
Where he will rustle in new blossom dress
To God's praise.
Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788-1857)
Morning Sun in Winter
On the ice-covered panes
from the morning sunlight
flower and plaice begin to sprout.
Dissolves in diamond tears
their frost and density,
runs down in strands of pearls.
Heart, O heart, after long pondering
let thy fortune's story
diamond tears write too!
Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914)
First snow
How now all things die and end
and the last lime leaf
wearily turns to the earth
into its warm resting place.
So also our doings,
What excites us unrestrained,
our loving our hating
be laid in withered leaves!
Pure white snow, oh snow,
cover both graves,
that the soul may prosper us
still and cool in winter's rest!
Soon comes that turn of spring,
Which love alone awakens,
Where hate stretches its hands
Dreary from the grave in vain.
Gottfried Keller (1819-1890)
Winter Landscape
Endlessly it stretches, the white expanse,
empty to the last breath of life;
the cheery pulses long ago falter, the streams,
it stirs no more even the cold wind.
The raven there, in the mountain of snow and ice,
stiff and hungry, digs deep,
and digs not out the morsel of food,
so, I think, he digs himself into the grave.
The sun, once more flashing through clouds,
Casts a last glance on the barren land,
but, sitting yawning on the throne of life,
death in a white festive robe roars at her.
Christian Friedrich Hebbel (1813-1863)
Snowdrops
It was like a soft singing
In the garden tonight,
As when balmy breezes went:
"Sweet bells, now awake,
For the warm time we bring,
Eh'er thought it yet." -
'Twas no singing, 'twas a kissing,
Stirred the silent bells softly,
That they all must sound
Of the multicolored splendor to come.
Ach, they could not wait,
But white from the last snow
Were still field and garden,
And they sank down with woe.
So already many a poet stretched
Song-weary down,
And the spring they woke,
Rushes over their grave.
Joseph von Eichendorff (1788-1857)
Continue in
PART 1: Winter - The Dark Season