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Original text - English - After my first visit to Boston, I spent almost...

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Category Literature - Daily life

Title
After my first visit to Boston, I spent almost...
Text to be translated
Submitted by RedShadow
Source language: English

After my first visit to Boston, I spent almost every winter in the North. Once I went on a visit to a New England village with its frozen lakes and vast snow fields. It was then that I had opportunities such as had never been mine to enter into the treasures of the snow.

I recall my surprise on discovering that a mysterious hand had stripped the trees and bushes, leaving only here and there a wrinkled leaf. The birds had flown, and their empty nests in the bare trees were filled with snow. Winter was on hill and field. The earth seemed benumbed by his icy touch, and the very spirits of the trees had withdrawn to their roots, and there, curled up in the dark, lay fast asleep. All life seemed to have ebbed away, and even when the sun shone the day was

Shrunk and cold,
As if her veins were sapless and old,
And she rose up decrepitly
For a last dim look at earth and sea.

The withered grass and the bushes were transformed into a forest of icicles.
Remarks about the translation
“The Story of My Life” by Helen Keller. That’s her autobiography.
It is available in the Canadian public domain.
Helen is deaf and blind.
This extract is from the Chapter XII, when she discovers the snow,
and how she perceives the winter.
20 January 2012 17:32