University of Virginia Library

NEW YEAR'S ADDRESS

One year, God bless You! quoth the man of rhyme,
Is but a small parenthesis in time;
It chimes with others, like a mingling tone;
It hath its meaning though it stand alone.
Trace the short seasons from the vernal cloud
To where they slumber in their winter shroud;
Within that circle every human dream
Has flushed and faded like the planet's beam,
All thoughts, all passions that shall ever glide
Through living channels with their changeless tide,
Have had their being, and are dimly cast
In Memory's outline on the hueless past.
Life's kindling torch, and Death's enveloped urn
Receive the flame and ashes in their turn;
Love doats and sickens; Anger frets and dies
With every twinkle in the starry skies;
And, as the wild autumnal winds that bear
Earth's myriad foliage through the desert air,
Time sweeps the trophies with his shriveled wings,
Torn from the bosom of all breathing things.
What if the tempest strike a deeper stain
On the gray summit which it beats in vain?
What if the cataract scoop the quivering rock
A little deeper with its ceaseless shock?
What if a nation change its badge or name,
Is man, is nature, then, no more the same?
Alas, poor drawler, throw the quill away
That will be serious when it should be gay;
Wrench a tough feather from some veteran bird!
File into satire every iron word,
Let the rank plume, for which the vulture bled,
Drip scalding poison, and thou may'st be read;
But keep thy wisdom, all its odds and ends,
For blue-eyed misses and lymphatic friends.
Spirit of Dulness! not for me alone
Bends thy vague shadow from its leaden throne;
Thy sceptre darkens o'er a wider reign
Than the dull precincts of my wearied brain;
Speak, prostrate Caesar, from thy school-boy page
Green with the verdure of reviving age;
The robe of empire cannot purple now
The poppies shadowing thy patrician brow!
We leave the follies of the passing year
Save one too noisy for a quiet ear.
What though it flourish o'er the astonished town,
The saintly drapery of the prelate's gown;
What though, great Æolus, this gentle strain
Shall make dull music for thine idiot brain;
When the lost pilot steers the bark no more
Well may the rhymester of a day deplore
The freight of science, sinking fast from view,
Swamped in the verbiage of her precious crew.
Yet for the stranger, on whose lonely grave
No flowers familiar to his childhood wave,
In this frail record be one passing sigh
Breathed o'er the darkness where his ashes lie.
Oh if the errors could the wise beguile,
Warmed by the magic of his winning smile,
Be they forgotten, and above him bend
Truth for her champion, Virtue for her friend.
Hark! with the clarion that the storm has blown
A southern trumpet blends its angry tone;
See, with the drapery of the tattered sky,
The nameless banner of a faction fly;
Why breaks that menace on the peaceful breeze
That wafts the treasures of an hundred seas?
Why floats the shadow of that flag afar,
Whose folds are blazoned with a falling star?
Go to the chaos where creation lay
Ere night receded from the shores of day,
And ask the spirit, whose annulling glance
Checked each abortion of eternal chance,
Why Life was scattered, gathering into form,
And Beauty smothered ere her lips could warm?
Our last year's verses—with paternal care
We keep one copy for our unborn heir—
Touched but too lightly on the wasting flame
Whose distant sparkles perished as they came.
God of all judgements, how that awful word
Has thrilled and trembled where it since was heard;
Pale lips pronounced it at the morning's dawn;
Those lips were silent ere the day was gone.
As on the forest sinks the dewy cloud,
Death fell and dampened on the shivering crowd;
War's thunder threatens ere his arrows fly,
And Famine whispers from her blazing sky:
Thou hadst no herald till thy bursting waves
Swept the shrunk victims to their shallow graves,
Farewell, sweet reader; once the song I raised
The Transcript quoted and the Courier praised.
Ah, then no drudgery chained my buoyant mind,
And thou, dear idol of my love, wast kind,
Alas! these objects that around me gleam
Like the red phial, in a druggist's dream;
The bell that calls me from each nascent line,
(Three strokes, O stranger, on that bell are mine;)
And years, whose progress every bosom feels,
Must wear the axle while it rolls the wheels,
Shall plead for Freedom till this wreath of rhyme
To-morrow tosses from the locks of Time.