Émile Nelligan, "Winter Evening"

[rfmcdonald]

Ah! how the snow falls free!
My pane is a frosty garden now.
Ah! how the snow falls free!
What is life's spasm anyhow
To the sorrow in me, in me!

All the pools around lie icy.
My heart is dark. Where go? Where stay?
All the hopes around lie icy.
Now I am a new Norway,
Its fair skies are gone from me.

Cry, birds in February,
For the dire chill that fate disposes,
Cry, birds in February,
Cry for my ruins, cry for my roses,
In the boughs of a Juniper tree.

Ah! how the snow falls free!
My pane is a frosty garden now.
Ah! how the snow falls free!
What is life's spasm anyhow
To all the anxiousness in me! . . .

- from The Complete Poems of Émile Nelligan, edited and translated by Fred Cogswell, (Montréal: Harvest House, 1983), p 20-21.