Winter morning
Cold frost and sunshine: day of wonder!
 But you, my friend, are still in slumber -
 Wake up, my beauty, time belies:
 You dormant eyes, I beg you, broaden
 Toward the northerly Aurora,
 As though a northern star arise!

Recall last night, the snow was whirling,
 Across the sky, the haze was twirling,
 The moon, as though a pale dye,
 Emerged with yellow through faint clouds.
 And there you sat, immersed in doubts,
 And now, - just take a look outside:

The snow below the bluish skies,
 Like a majestic carpet lies,
 And in the light of day it shimmers.
 The woods are dusky. Through the frost
 The greenish fir-trees are exposed;
 And under ice, a river glitters.

The room is lit with amber light.
 And bursting, popping in delight
 Hot stove still rattles in a fray.
 While it is nice to hear its clatter,
 Perhaps, we should command to saddle
 A fervent mare into the sleight?

And sliding on the morning snow
 Dear friend, we'll let our worries go,
 And with the zealous mare we'll flee.
 We'll visit empty ranges, thence,
 The woods, which used to be so dense
 And then the shore, so dear to me.
Alexander Pushkin

Winter evening
Storm has set the heavens scowling,
Whirling gusty blizzards wild,
Now they are like beasts a-growling,
Now a-wailing like a child;

Now along the brittle thatches
They will scud with rustling sound,
Now against the window latches
Like belated wanderers pound.

Our frail hut is glum and sullen,
Dim with twilight and with care.
Why, dear granny, have you fallen
Silent by the window there?

Has the gale's insistent prodding
Made your drowsing senses numb,
Are you lulled to gentle nodding
By the whirling spindle's hum?

Let us drink for grief, let's drown it,
Comrade of my wretched youth,
Where's the jar? Pour out and down it,
Wine will make us less uncouth.

Sing me of the tomtit hatching                                                                                                                           
Safe beyond the ocean blue,
Sing about the maiden fetching
Water at the morning dew.

Storm has set the heavens scowling,
Whirling gusty blizzards wild,
Now they sound like beasts a-growling,
Now a-wailing like a child.

Let us drink for grief, let's drown it,
Comrade of my wretched youth,
Where's the jar? Pour out and down it,
Wine will make us less uncouth.
Alexander Pushkin (translated by Walter Arndt)

Winter road
Through the murk the moon is veering,
Ghost-accompanist of night,
On the melancholy clearings
Pouring melancholy light.

Runs the troika with its dreary
Toneless jangling sleigh-bell on
Over dismal snow' I'm weary,
Hungry, frozen to the bone.

Coachman in a homely fashion's
Singing as we flash along;
Now a snatch of mournful passion,
Now a foulmouthed drinking-song.

Not a light shines, not a lonely
Dusky cabin. . . Snow and hush. . .
Streaming past the troika only
Mileposts, striped and motley, rush.

Dismal, dreary. . . But returning
Homewards! And tomorrow, through
Pleasant crackles of the burning
Pine-logs, I shall gaze at you:

Dream, and go on gazing, Nina,
One whole circle of the clock;
Midnight will not come between us,
When we gently turn the lock

On our callers. . . Drowsing maybe,
Coachman's faded, lost the tune;
Toneless, dreary, goes the sleigh-bell;
Nina, clouds blot out the moon.
Alexander Pushkin

Winter Sky
Ice-chips plucked whole from the smoke,
the past week’s stars all frozen in flight,
Head over heels the skater’s club goes,
clinking its rink with the peal of night.

Step slow, slower, slow-er, skater,
pride carving its trace as you race by.
each turn’s a constellation cut there,
scratched by a skate in Norway’s sky.

The air is fettered in frozen iron.
Oh, skaters! There – it’s all the same,
that, like snake’s eyes set in ivory,
night’s on earth, a domino game:

that moon, a numb hound’s tongue
is there, frozen tight: that mouths like
the forgers of coins’ – are stung,
filled with lava of breathtaking ice.
Boris Pasternak

THE BIRCH-TREE
Just below my window
Stands a birch-tree white,
Under snow in winter
Gleaming silver bright

On the fluffy branches
Sparkling in a row
Dangle pretty tassels
Of the purest snow.

There the birch in silence
Slumbers all day long
And the snow gleams brightly
In the golden sun.

And the dawn demurely
Going on its rounds
With a silver mantle
Decks again the boughs.
1913 Sergei Esenin

Voronezh
And the town is frozen solid in a vice,
Trees, walls, snow, beneath the glass.
Over crystal, on slippery tracks of ice,
painted sleighs and I, together, pass.
And over St Peter’s poplars, crows
a pale green dome there that glows,
dim in sun-shrouded dust.
The field of heroes lingers in my thought,
Kulikovo’s barbarian battleground caught.
Frozen poplars, like glasses for a toast,
clash now, more noisily, overhead.
As though at our wedding, and the crowd
drinking our health and happiness.

But Fear and the Muse take turns to guard
the room where the exiled poet is banished,
and the night, marching at full pace,
of approaching dawn, has no knowledge.
Anna Akhmatova

The forest is entranced
by Winter the Magician.
Under velvet snow
it's mute, immobile, glistening
wondrously with life,

standing enchanted,
neither dead nor alive,
entranced by a magic dream,
entirely covered, fettered
by light links of snow.

Should winter's sun cast a sudden flare
glancing across its summits,
not a thing will shiver in it.
It will sparkle and flame
and be blindingly fair!
Fyodor Tyutchev
  
Snow
All going to the whiteness, earthly,
As an unmoving immense wall,
There pours a snow, becoming denser,
And shields us from daylight at all.

Not giving to its move attention,
How slow is its heavy stream –
It seems, the force of gravitation
Directs it to the earthly realm.

Behind this shroud of the whitness,
Towns are hidden and green woods,
Behind this whitness of the silence,
There are the voices, rings and hoots.

Behind this curtain, white and giant,
Lies winter in the sunny lights,
Behind this mental whitened bound
Our universe, eternal, lies.

Then let all be in it in rightness:
Wide rivers’ floods and birds returns,
The cannonades of July’s thunders,
The noisy rain, the noiseless snows.
Konstanin Vanshenkin transaltion by Yevgeny Bonver

From the poem "Eugene Onegin"
That year the season was belated
and autumn lingered, long and slow;
expecting winter, nature waited --
only in January the snow,
night of the second, started flaking.
Next day Tatyana, early waking,
saw through the window, morning-bright,
roofs, flowerbeds, fences, all in white,
panes patterned by the finest printer,
with trees decked in their silvery kit,
and jolly magpies on the flit,
and hills that delicately winter
had with its brilliant mantle crowned --
and glittering whiteness all around.

        II

Winter!... The countryman, enchanted,
breaks a new passage with his sleigh;
his nag has smelt the snow, and planted
a shambling hoof along the way;
a saucy kibitka is slicing
its furrow through the powdery icing;
the driver sits and cuts a dash
in sheepskin coat with scarlet sash.
Here comes the yard-boy, who has chosen
his pup to grace the sledge, while he
becomes a horse for all to see;
the rogue has got a finger frozen:
it hurts, he laughs, and all in vain
his mother taps the window-pane.
Alexander Pushkin

The winter, like the ancient shrine,
Lay before us in desolation.
Stones of walls and pillars, fine,
Crumble under winds and waters, patient.

The porch of marble is destroyed,
Like nets, the ice-floes are transparent.
And gradually melts the god,
Shaped out by the children, fervent.
Nikolai Braun

Sources: Poetryloverspage RussianLegacy Materinstvo.ru Ryabchikov.ru ArtLib Hstars.ru
Julia Alieva