How I Love the First Chill, Poem by Alfred de Musset

Poem by Alfred De Musset Collection Early PoemsPeriod 19th century

Sonnet.

How I love the first chill of winter! the thatch,
Beneath the hunter’s foot, refusing to bend!
When the magpie comes to the fields the green hay perfumes,
The hearth awakens in the depths of the old castle;

It is the season of the city. — Oh! when last year,
I returned there, when I saw that good Louvre and its dome,
Paris and its smoke, and all that beautiful realm
(I still hear the postilions shouting in the wind),

How I loved that gray weather, those passersby, and the Seine
Beneath its thousand lanterns seated as a sovereign!
I was going to see winter again. — And you, my life, and you!

Oh! in your long gazes I was going to steep my soul
I greeted your walls. — For, who would have told me, madame,
That your heart so soon had changed toward me?

Alfred De Musset

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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