Alexander Pushkin
Winter Morning

Miraculous morning! Frost and sun!
But you, delightful friend, sleep on.
’Tis time for beauty to bestir.
Open your soft and drowsy eyes
To greet the Dawn in northern skies,
A northern star to welcome her.

Last night, remember, a wind blew
In the rough sky a thick mist grew.
And the moon, like a pallid smear.
Was yellow through the gloomy cloud.
In melancholy you sat bowed.
But now, look through the window there!

Snow underneath the clear blue skies
Glitters in sunlight as it lies;
A gorgeous coverlet it glows.
Black though the wood’s transparent screen,
The fir-trees through the frost are green
The streams are bright beneath the floes.

Now every room with amber light
Is blazing. Crackling with delight
The stove bursts into heat and flares.
It’s good to sit and dream to-day;
But won’t you tell them get the sleigh
And harness up the chestnut mares ?

Across the slippery morning snow,
My sweet companion, we shall go
And let the restless horses race;
We’ll visit lonely fields of grass,
Woods where in summer none can pass,
And river-bank, my most loved place.

Translated by Cecil Maurice Bowra