When I got up this morning the world was a chilled hollow of dead white and faint blues. The light that came through the windows was very queer, and it contrived to make the familiar business of splashing and shaving and brushing and dressing very queer too.

Then the sun came out, and by the time I had sat down to breakfast it was shining bravely and flushing the snow with delicate pinks.The dining-room window had been transformed into a lovely Japanese print. The little plum-tree outside, with the faintly flushed snow lining its boughs and artfully disposed along its trunk, stood in full sunlight.

An hour or two later everything was a cold glitter of white and blue. The world had completely changed again. The little Japanese prints had all vanished.I looked out of my study window, over the garden, the meadow, to the low hills beyond, and the ground was one long glare, the sky was steely, and all the trees so many black and sinister shapes.

There was indeed something curiously sinister about the whole prospect. It was as if our kindly country-side, closed to the very heart of England, had been turned into a cruel steppe. At any moment, it seemed, a body of horsemen might be seen breaking out from the black copse, so many instruments of tyranny, and shots might be heard and some distant patch of snow be reddened. It was that kind of landscape.

參考中文翻譯

早上起來，我發(fā)現(xiàn)整個世界簡直成了一座冰冷的空洞，顏色死白縹青。光線透過窗戶照射進來頗呈異狀，它設法讓連潑灑、修面、刷牙、穿衣等這些日常舉動也都帶上一點兒異狀。

不一會兒太陽出來了，在我吃早餐的時候，艷美的陽光把白雪映得粉嫩。餐室的窗戶已被幻變?yōu)橐环匀说娜毡净ú?。窗外幼小的梅樹一株，站在充足的陽光下，枝頭覆著微微泛紅的白雪，枝干風致絕佳。

一兩個小時之后，一切都化成寒光一片，白里透青。周圍世界再次完全改變，剛才的日本印花布等已經(jīng)不復存在。我探頭窗外，向書房前面的花園、草地以及更遠的低丘眺望，但覺大地光晶耀目，不可逼視，高天寒氣凜冽，色作鐵青，周圍的一切樹木也都呈現(xiàn)陰森恐怖之狀。

真的，周圍的整個景象的確有一種難以名狀的恐怖氣氛。仿佛我們這塊近在京畿的可愛郊原竟霎時變成一片嚴酷的曠野。仿佛隨時隨刻都能瞥見一批批武夫作為暴政的工具從那黑魈的叢林背后躍馬殺出，都能聽到槍殺之聲，而遠處一片土地上白雪遂被染作殷紅。此時周圍正是這種景象。