A Rhyme for the New Year

"Ho! watchman, standing on thy tower, 
     As years sweep onward in their flight 
     What signs in heaven attract thy sight,
Predictive of the coming hour
     When earth shall see the reign of right? 
     What of the night? What of the night?" 
     And, pointing to the dim gray light
Just struggling up the eastern sky,
A promise and a prophecy
     That day shall chase the dark that gloometh
O'er heaven to hide it from our eye,
     The watchman saith, "The morning cometh!" 
     And angels sing, "The morning cometh!" 
     And earth repeats, "The morning cometh!"
And "God be thanked!" our hearts reply.

Aye, God be thanked! That glimmering ray 
Shall kindle to the perfect day, 
Before whose beams shall slink away
     The horrid shapes of darkness born — 
All foulest rites and cruel creeds, 
Fierce hates, and coward fears, and deeds
     Of shame that shun the light of morn :
Then from the tyrant's nerveless hands
Shall drop the scourge that smote the lands;
From its red carnival of death
The sword return into its sheath,
     To reap its bloody sheaves no more:
Peace, with her oriflamme unfurled,
Summon the nations of the world 
     Its better era to restore ;
And hungry greed shall loose its hold
Upon the toiler's scanty gold ;
The fetters from the slave shall fall; 
     The dungeon-gates that shut from hope 
     The true, brave souls that dared to cope 
     With the throned wrong, again shall ope,
And Freedom give her boon to all!

Exult, O Earth! — despoiled so long,
     Groping in blindness and in sin, 
Cursed by thy children's cruel wrong, 
And scourged by hates, a fiendish throng,
     That stand thy temple-gates within — 
Lift up thy regal brow! for lo! 
The eastern heavens are all aglow 
With the new dawn, predicting so
     Thy new life, which shall soon begin; 
A large, rich, noble life, full-brimmed
     With pure impulses, grand desires,
And deeds as grand — unsmutched, undimmed
     By any lie — its altar-fires 
Fed with the love of love, and bright
     With offerings of the true and right; 
Not commonplace, nor mean, nor dull;
     A life whose circling clasp shall hold 
God's life, with all its manifold
     Expressions of the beautiful; 
And, reaching on and upward still,
     Shape all its issues to His will, 
And so life's holiest aims fulfill.