Jack Frost poem

Il freddo, amici cari, ci mette a dura prova in questi giorni. Ma noi guardiamo avanti e in attesa della primavera inganniamo il tempo cercando di trovare i lati positivi di questo clima rigido.

Conoscete la poesia Jack Frost di Thomas Nicoll Hepburn? Si tratta di un autore scozzese (che scriveva sotto lo pseudonimo di Gabriel Setoun). La poesia parla di Jack Frost, appunto, il famoso personaggio che porta l’inverno, il ghiaccio, la neve.

Una poesia davvero molto bella, incantata quanto basta per riuscire a farci vedere la magia dell’inverno con la neve che imbianca il paesaggio rendendolo argenteo.

The door was shut, as doors should be
Before you went to bed last night
Yet Jack Frost has got in, you see
And left your window silver white.

He must have waited till you slept
And not a single word he spoke
But penciled over the panes and crept
Away again before you woke.

And now you cannot see the hills
Nor fields that stretch beyond the lane
But there are fairer things than these
His fingers traced on every pane.

Rocks and castles towering high
Hills and dales, and streams and fields
And knights in armor riding by
With nodding plumes and shining shields.

And here are little boats, and there
Big ships with sails spread to the breeze
And yonder, palm trees waving fair
On islands set in silver seas

And butterflies with gauzy wings
And herds of cows and flocks of sheep
And fruit and flowers and all the things
You see when you are sound asleep.

For creeping softly underneath
The door when all the lights are out
Jack Frost takes every breath you breathe
And knows the things you think about.

He paints them on the window-pane
In fairy lines with frozen steam;
And when you wake you see again
The lovely things you saw in dream.