The Closing Year

     ‘Tis midnights holy hour, and silence now
Ia brooding like a gentle spirit o'er
The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds
The bell's deep tones are swelling: 't is the knoll 
Of the departed year. No funeral train
Is sweeping past, yet, on the stream and wood, 
With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest
Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred
As by a mourner's sigh; and on you cloud, 
That floats so still and placidly through heaven,
The spirits of the seasons seem to stand—
Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form,
And Wintar, with his aged locks — and breathe, 
In mournful cadences, that come abroad
Like the far wind-harp's wild and touching wail, 
A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year 
Gone from the earth for ever.
                                              ‘Tis a time
For memory and for tears. Within the deep 
Still chambers of the heart, a spectre dim,
Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time, 
Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold 
And solemn finger to the beautiful 
And holy visions, that have passed away, 
And left no shadow of their loveliness 
On the dead waste of life. That spectre lifts 
The coffin lid of Hope, and Joy, and Love, 
And, bending mournfully above the pale 
Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers 
O'er what has passed to nothingness. The year 
Has gone, and with it, many a glorious throng 
Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow,
Its shadow in each heart. In its swift course 
It waved its sceptre o'er the beautiful:
And they are not. It laid its pallid hand 
Upon the strong man: and the haughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.
It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged 
The bright and joyous: and the tearful wail 
Of stricken ones is heard where erst the song 
And reckless shout resounded. It passed o'er 
The battle-plain, where sword, and spear, and shield 
Flashed in the light of mid day; and the strength 
Of serried boats is shivered, and the grass, 
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above 
The crashed and mouldering skeleton. It came,
And faded like a wreath of mist at eve;
Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air, 
It heralded its millions to their home 
In the dim land of dreams.

                                        Remorseless Time!
Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe! what power 
Can stay him in his silent course, or melt 
His iron heart to pity? On, still on 
He presses, and for ever. The proud bird,
The condor of the Andes, that can soar 
Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave
The fury of the northern hurricane,
And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home, 
Furls his broad wings at nightfall, and sinks down 
To test upon his mountain-crag; but Time 
Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness;
And Night's deep darkness has no chain to bind 
His rushing pinion. Revolutions sweep
O’er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast 
Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink 
Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles 
Spring blazing from the Ocean, and go back 
To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear
To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow 
Their tall heads to the plain; new empires rise, 
Gathering the strength of hoary centuries, 
And rush down like the Alpine Avalanche, 
Startling the nations; and the very stars, 
Yon bright and burning blazonry of GOD, 
Glitter awhile in their eternal depths, 
And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train, 
Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away 
To darkle in the trackless void. Yet Time,
Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce carer, 
Dark, stern, all-pitiless; and pauses not,
Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path, 
To sit and muse, like other conquerors, 
Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought.