The poem on this page is "Winternag" ("Winter Night") by Eugène N. Marais (1871–1936), first published in 1905 in the newspaper Land en Volk. It is often called the first poem to prove that the young written language of Afrikaans could carry abstract, lyrical thought. Because Marais died in 1936 — ninety years ago — the poem is firmly in the public domain, and we can read it in full. For an advanced learner it is a small museum of the features that make early Afrikaans verse feel different from a modern news report: heavy inversion, fronting of the emphatic word, an elevated vocabulary, and extreme compression.
The poem
O koud is die windjie en skraal. En blink in die dof-lig en kaal, so wyd as die Heer se genade, lê die velde in sterlig en skade. En hoog in die rande, versprei in die brande, is die grassaad aan roere soos winkende hande.
O treurig die wysie op die ooswind se maat, soos die lied van 'n meisie in haar liefde verlaat. In elk' grashalm se vou blink 'n druppel van dou, en vinnig verbleek dit tot ryp in die kou!
A working gloss of the whole poem:
O koud is die windjie en skraal.
Oh cold is the little wind and thin.
En blink in die dof-lig en kaal, so wyd as die Heer se genade, lê die velde in sterlig en skade.
And gleaming in the dim light and bare, as wide as the Lord's mercy, lie the fields in starlight and shadow.
En hoog in die rande, versprei in die brande, is die grassaad aan roere soos winkende hande.
And high on the ridges, scattered among the burnt patches, the grass-seed is stirring like beckoning hands.
O treurig die wysie op die ooswind se maat, soos die lied van 'n meisie in haar liefde verlaat.
Oh mournful the tune to the beat of the east wind, like the song of a girl forsaken in her love.
In elk' grashalm se vou blink 'n druppel van dou, en vinnig verbleek dit tot ryp in die kou!
In the fold of each grass-blade gleams a drop of dew, and quickly it fades to frost in the cold!
Inversion: the verb thrown forward over its subject
The very first line already breaks the everyday pattern. Plain prose would say Die windjie is koud — subject, verb, adjective. Marais writes O koud is die windjie — the adjective koud is hurled to the front and the subject die windjie lands after the verb. This is inversion, and it is the engine of the whole poem.
Afrikaans is a verb-second (V2) language: in a normal main clause the finite verb sits in slot two, whatever comes first. Poetry exploits this ruthlessly. By fronting an adverb or a predicate, the poet forces the subject to the far side of the verb, and the emphatic word gets the listener's first attention.
So wyd as die Heer se genade lê die velde.
As wide as the Lord's mercy lie the fields.
In elk' grashalm se vou blink 'n druppel van dou.
In the fold of each grass-blade gleams a drop of dew.
In both lines a long phrase of place or manner opens the sentence (so wyd as..., in elk' grashalm se vou), so the verb (lê, blink) immediately follows it and the real subject (die velde, 'n druppel van dou) trails behind. Modern prose can do this too, but it tends to keep such openers short; verse stacks them and lingers. The mechanics of putting the verb second are covered in verb-second word order, and the art of choosing what to put first in focus and fronting.
Fronting for focus, not for grammar
Inversion is mechanical; fronting is a choice. Marais opens two stanzas with the exclamation O plus a fronted adjective — O koud is..., O treurig die wysie... — so that the very first thing the reader feels is cold, then mournful. He is not telling us a wind exists and happens to be cold; he is leading with the cold itself. The thing being described arrives second, almost as an afterthought.
O treurig die wysie op die ooswind se maat.
Oh mournful the tune to the beat of the east wind.
Notice something even sharper here: in O treurig die wysie there is no verb at all. The copula is has been dropped. This elliptical, verbless predication ("mournful, the tune...") is a compression device — see the section below — but it is only possible because the fronted adjective already carries the whole emotional weight. Modern prose would restore the verb: Die wysie is treurig. The poem refuses to.
Elevated and archaic vocabulary
The poem's diction is deliberately raised above everyday speech, and a C1 reader should be able to name the moves:
| In the poem | Everyday equivalent | Register effect |
|---|---|---|
| die Heer se genade | God se goedheid | biblical, elevated (literary) |
| treurig | hartseer | poetic word for "mournful" (literary) |
| die wysie | die deuntjie / melodie | old-fashioned "tune, air" (literary) |
| verlaat | in die steek gelaat | terse past participle, "forsaken" (literary) |
| elk' | elke | apocope of elke for the metre (literary) |
The clipped elk' — with an apostrophe marking the dropped -e of elke — is purely metrical: the poet needed one syllable, not two, so he cut the ending and signalled the cut with punctuation. This kind of elision is a hallmark of the period and is glossed further on the literary style page; for the biblical colour of die Heer se genade, see archaic and biblical register.
Soos die lied van 'n meisie in haar liefde verlaat.
Like the song of a girl forsaken in her love.
Versprei in die brande, is die grassaad aan roere.
Scattered among the burnt patches, the grass-seed is stirring.
The phrase aan roere ("astir, in motion") is itself an elevated, slightly archaic way of saying aan die roer / aan't beweeg. A modern speaker would say die grassaad beweeg. The older aan + bare verb-noun construction survives mainly in fixed literary phrases and is one of the subtle period markers an advanced reader learns to spot — a faint cousin of the older subjunctive and infinitival forms discussed under subjunctive remnants.
Compression: leaving words out
The signature of this poem is how much it omits. Verbless lines (O treurig die wysie), participles standing alone in place of full clauses (versprei in die brande = "[which is] scattered among the burnt patches"), and bare comparatives (so wyd as...) all strip away the connective tissue that prose would supply.
Versprei in die brande.
Scattered among the burnt patches.
Read as prose, that fragment would expand to a full relative clause: die grassaad wat in die brande versprei is ("the grass-seed that is scattered among the burnt patches"). The poem fuses the participle directly onto the noun and lets the reader rebuild the clause. This terseness is exactly what gives early Afrikaans verse its density: every removed word makes the remaining ones heavier. The relative clauses the poem is avoiding are spelled out on the relative clauses page.
Common mistakes
❌ Reading O koud is die windjie as a question.
Incorrect — O koud is die windjie is a fronted exclamation, not yes/no inversion; it means 'oh, the wind is cold'.
✅ O koud is die windjie en skraal.
Oh cold is the little wind and thin.
❌ Die wysie treurig is.
Incorrect — copying poetic verb-final order into a main clause; prose needs the verb second.
✅ Die wysie is treurig.
The tune is mournful.
❌ elke' (with a kept e and apostrophe)
Incorrect — the metrical clip is elk', the e is dropped and replaced by the apostrophe.
✅ elk' grashalm
each grass-blade (poetic)
❌ Using die wysie / aan roere in a casual conversation.
Incorrect register — these are literary words; in speech say die deuntjie and die gras beweeg.
✅ Die deuntjie is hartseer en die gras beweeg in die wind.
The tune is sad and the grass moves in the wind.
Key takeaways
- "Winternag" (Marais, 1905) is public-domain (poet died 1936) and can be quoted in full.
- Inversion driven by V2 throws the verb in front of its subject whenever a place- or manner-phrase opens the line: so wyd as... lê die velde.
- Fronting an adjective with O (O koud is..., O treurig die wysie) puts the emotion first; the verbless second example also shows ellipsis of is.
- The diction is elevated and partly archaic (die Heer se genade, wysie, aan roere, elk') — beautiful in verse, out of place in casual speech.
- Compression — dropped copulas, lone participles for relative clauses — is the poem's defining device; restore the missing prose words to see the craft.
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Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- Literary and Poetic StyleC2 — The stylistic resources of literary Afrikaans — fronting and inversion for effect, elevated and archaic vocabulary, fossilised subjunctive blessings, and the compression of verse — seen through the early, public-domain poets.
- Topicalisation and Focus FrontingB2 — Afrikaans fronts almost any constituent to the first slot for topic or contrast — forcing V2 inversion — and uses the dit is ... wat cleft to spotlight a focus, where English leans on stress alone.
- Subjunctive Remnants and the OptativeC1 — Afrikaans lost its productive subjunctive; what survives are a handful of fossilised wish and blessing formulas — mag-, lank lewe, dit sy so, as 't ware — to recognise, not to build from.