Now the New Year comes near and the night passes.
At heaven’s command the day presses hard on the darkness.
The wild weather of the world wakens outside,
Clouds casting fierce cold across the earth
With bitter blasts from the north to lash the naked.
The snow shivered down, freezing, stinging the wild creatures,
The shrieking wind came bursting out of the sky
And piled up high drifts in all the hollows.
The knight listens to it all, lying in his bed.
Though his eyelids are shut he barely sleeps.
Each time the cock crows he recalls what awaits him.

~ Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, trans. WS Merwin