Edelweiss by Berthold Auerbach

In this part of the country the frost, when it has once set in, holds on unrelentingly for many months. The Morgenhalde alone makes a happy exception to the rule. There the sun has sufficient power to make a dripping from the roof, when all elsewhere is hung with heavy icicles. But this winter even the sun in heaven failed to treat the Morgenhalde with its wonted friendliness. There was no thawing outside the house nor in.

Not only was the cold greater than it used to be, -- that was easily accounted for by the cutting down of the forest, whose tall trunks lay scattered about, waiting for the spring floods to carry them down into the valley, -- but a weight as of frost lay heavy on the hearts of the dwellers upon the Morgenhalde. Annele seemed to have lost the power of rousing herself to life. Something had frozen up within her, which no warm breath could have melted, had any such breath reached her.