The poetical works of William H. C. Hosmer :: :: University of Virginia Library

HYMN.

To the sunless land of death
The poor, white-haired Old Year
Hath gone with his children twelve,
Brave sons and daughters dear:
And the sides of the wooded hill
Are threshed by the Storm King's flail,
And rusheth through the glen,
With a hollow sound, the gale.

Bright openings in the cloud
Cheered the Old Year's dying days,
While he thought of the summer flowers,
And of autumn's purple haze;
And a dream “that such things were,”
Though it bathed in light his heart,
Was a call from another world,
And a warning to depart.

302

Last born of a little flock
Wert thou, December wild!
And, shuddering, looked thy sire
On his dark, ill-boding child;
For a fiend in the Old Man's ear
Had screamed a warning loud,
That the twelfth one of the band
Would bring him to his shroud.

More wan his visage grew
When the luckless reign began,
And a chill crept through the veins
Of the venerable man:
And how heartless was thy laugh
When descending hail and sleet
On the palsy-shaken form
Of the bowed old Pilgrim beat.

On the dead and shrivelled leaves
With a trembling step and slow,
Craving refuge from the storm,
Marched that hoary man of woe;
And he roved through church-yards bleak,
Reading names he loved the best;
Then in faltering accents prayed
For a couch of endless rest.

Now he lieth stark and mute,
With the mighty ones of old;
He hath gone with all his joys
And his sorrows manifold;
But seed by the Old Year sown
Will in other hours uprise,
And the plants of evil bear,
Mixed with blossoms for the skies.