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

 Soon we shall plunge into the cold darkness;

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

Farewell, vivid brightness of our short-lived summers!

I hear already the funereal rumble

Already I hear the dismal sound of firewood

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

Falling with a clatter on the courtyard pavements.

Winter will enter in my soul to dwell —

All winter will possess my being: wrath,

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

Hate, horror, shivering, hard, forced labor,

My heart will seem, to sun that polar hell,

And, like the sun in his polar Hades,

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

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

Shuddering I hear the heavy thud of fuel.

All atremble I listen to each falling log;

The building of a gallows sounds as good!

The building of a scaffold has no duller sound.

My spirit, like a tower, reels to the cruel

My spirit resembles the tower which crumbles

Battering-ram in every crash of wood.

Under the tireless blows of the battering ram.

The ceaseless echoes rock me and appal.

It seems to me, lulled by these monotonous shocks,

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

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

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

For whom? — Yesterday was summer; here is autumn

There booms a farewell volley in the sound.

That mysterious noise sounds like a departure.