New Year’s Address

Oh Year! you’re off, hey? Without notice?
Where Lethe’s black eternal moat us,
Grim Death clutched on your epiglottis,
     Lost Fifty Seven!
The last breath squeezes from your throat lis,
     You poor unshriven!

It’s only about last week Monday
You came to us, all dapper one day,
Sweet as loaf sugar and Burgundy,
     Next day a bitter,
Salt, sour, sad, sorry salmagundi
     You lyin critter!

You’ve done the things you wasn’t “sot to,”
And left undone the things you ought to
Have done, and have done with, and brought a 
     Few things about,
That are about as well as what you
     Might hope, no doubt.

But who?—stand up and give your answer
Who told you in your birthday stanzas
To raise partic’lar Ned in Kansas?
     And send one Walker
To Coventry, while ‘tother scans us
     From Nicaragua?

What made you give a shuck to the luck
Of hungry rascals pawing muck
In the lean train of dear old Buck,
     And split his breeches,
Just as the party pockets stuck
     Out with new riches?

How knew you it would cheer good souls
??? ??? ??? ??? ??? o’er the coals
[4 lines obscured]

Time, time! You Scyth(e)ian, go to thunder!
All glory is your glorious plunder;
All strength to your strength must knock under;
     All beauty strike you
With your cold breath, till, faith! I wonder
     How men can like you!

But debtors love to try your credit,
And doomed-to-th’-nooze-men, when they dread it,
Ask time (untied) in prayer to medit-
     Ate on their neck,—
Whether the nooze would hang or ed it,
     Break in, or break.

They say that you will have to knuckle,
That one day man’s confounded luck’ll
Turn, and make all the ill imps chuckle
     On ‘tother side
Of their wiry mouths, till earth, dead struck, ‘ll
     Curl up and slide!

Time’s passing bell has been foretoll’d,
Its last day’s lasted from of old;
Strange tales of comets have unrolled
     Their dreadful splendor,
But Earth sticks tighter than a cold,
     The seer can’t end her.

And Time who grvely feared before
T’ unhang his scythe and be no mower,
Gets “wound up” only just to go a 
     De’il deal the glibber;
And minds no downfall, nor uproar,
     Nor solemn gibber.

Millers may whistle till their time’s out,
And lank Advent-urers eke their chimes out,
And Watts’y bards wail warning rhymes out,
     In hopes to kill her,—
Dear Earth grins on, and shells her dimes out
     To her Joe Miller.

So, hip! hurrah! A Happy New Year
To all good souls, however few ye’are,
Who love earth for the good ye do there,
     True joy exhaling
As flowers do scents, or oyster-stew near,
     Our sense assailing.

A happy New Year, Friends and Cousins!
The best to day, and in the dozens
Hereafter, may there be no worse one,
     Till Time goes dumb,
And we go shouting by the thousands
     In Kingdom Come!