Stanzas for the New Year

Down the dark tide of Time, with flow
     Unceasing, hath another year
Its record borne of joy and wo,
     Hope, exultation, fear—
With constant force through shade and sun,
The swelling stream hath hurried on,
And flung its shattered wave at last
Into the ocean of the Past.
One moment in the fitful light
     Flashed the frail bubbles as they fell—
Then bursting, vanished from the sight;
And shrilly the wild winds of Night
     Shrieked the OLD YEAR’S farewell!

So hath it gone—and with it borne
Treasures that Time cannot return:
High hopes—that o’er existence threw
The glory of their rainbow hue,
And to the Future gave a light
     Like that which shone in Eden’s bowers
In earliest time—too purely bright
     For such a world as ours:
Dreams—such as lull the poet’s soul
     And fill it with divinest thought,
Till underneath its meek control
     Passion, and pride, and sense are brought:
Desires that overleaped the earth,
     And proudly turning from the real,
Claimed in a higher world their birth,
     Grasping the mystic and ideal:
And more than these—the love which flung
Its blessed light Life’s clouds among,
Till to the waiting soul was given
Bright glimpses of the upper Heaven.

So hath it gone—and oh! not all
     Who hailed in thoughtless mood its birth,
With music and with festival—
     Still with their presence gladden earth.
The Beautiful—whose radiant smile
     Lie sunshine fell upon the heart,
And who with words of cheer the while,
Lovingly spoken, could beguile
The spirit’s grief, and reconcile
     The living to life’s cureless smart—
     Oh! early summoned to depart!
We miss you from our common track;
We weep—but cannot win you back!

The sunshine of your smile is flung
     On brows that wear no trace of sorrow,
The radiant hosts of Heaven among—
And richer notes are on your tongue
Than e’er from harps Æolian rung,
     Or Earth from Music’s self could borrow.
We mourn—but not for you whose eyes
     Have closed on earth to ope in heaven—
The freed from mortal agonies—
     To whom eternal rest is given!
Our tears are for the living only—
     For sorrowing hearts whose hopes are fled
     Whose memories are with the dead—
For them—the crushed and lonely.

So hath it gone—the olden Year—
     Life’s wrecks upon its vanished wave—
Nor pauses in his dread career
Death’s ally and his charioteer,
     Sweeping, remorseless, to the grave,
     Alike the tyrant and the slave,
     The good, the beautiful, the brave,
The peasant and the peer;
And sadly swells on every gale
The death-dirge and the funeral wail.

Pass on—God’s minister of wrath!
     “Time, the Avenger!”—pass thou on—
Though in thy desolating path
     Are wrecks of Empires strown!
What though the Good have sunk beneath
Thy billowy surge, struck down by Death?
     They to their rest have gone!
And nearer to its final fall—
     Nearer to his dishonored tomb—
The Babel by Oppression built,
The tyrant, hardened in his guilt
For redly burns upon the wall
     The writing of their doom!

Pass on—returnless years! Ye bring
     Nearer the golden age of Time—
When man, no more an abject thing,
Shall from the sleep of ages spring,
With new-born life, and proudly fling
     Aside his bondage and his crime, 
And rising in his manhood, be
What God designed him—pure and free!
     And Earth, throughout her every clime
No more the spoil of human hate,
By sin no longer desolate—
     Returned her bloom—renewed her prime—
     Shall in her Eden-dress appear;
Exulting in her youth restored,
And singing praises to the Lord,
     Through all her New—her SABBATH-YEAR!