Soon we shall plunge into the cold darkness;

 Soon into frozen shades, like leaves, we'll tumble.

Farewell, vivid brightness of our short-lived summers!

Adieu, short summer's blaze, that shone to mock.

Already I hear the dismal sound of firewood

I hear already the funereal rumble

Falling with a clatter on the courtyard pavements.

Of logs, as on the paving-stones they shock.

All winter will possess my being: wrath,

Winter will enter in my soul to dwell —

Hate, horror, shivering, hard, forced labor,

Rage, hate, fear, horror, labour forced and dire!

And, like the sun in his polar Hades,

My heart will seem, to sun that polar hell,

My heart will be no more than a frozen red block.

A dim, red, frozen block, devoid of fire.

All atremble I listen to each falling log;

Shuddering I hear the heavy thud of fuel.

The building of a scaffold has no duller sound.

The building of a gallows sounds as good!

My spirit resembles the tower which crumbles

My spirit, like a tower, reels to the cruel

Under the tireless blows of the battering ram.

Battering-ram in every crash of wood.

It seems to me, lulled by these monotonous shocks,

The ceaseless echoes rock me and appal.

That somewhere they're nailing a coffin, in great haste.

They're nailing up a coffin, I'll be bound,

For whom? — Yesterday was summer; here is autumn

For whom? — Last night was Summer. Here's the Fall.

That mysterious noise sounds like a departure.

There booms a farewell volley in the sound.