University of Virginia Library

The air is populous with snow,
Falling and flying, above and below:
This waste of households is fast asleep,
Nor any the old year's death-watch keep,
As elsewhere I've seen when every man
Saluted this hour with his bousing-can.

The snow, how it flies! but it may not be
I coldly part, old year, from thee,
Without a short kind benedicite!
It may not be that thou who art
So different from thy ancestry,
Shalt have no requiem ere we part.
Perhaps when some slow coming year
Now in the future, hath drawn near,
I may rehearse these lines while she—
You know whom now I mean—she may
Sit by me hand in hand, and they
Shall carry us back through smiles and tears,
Till all this present reappears,
The fireside game, the endless talk;
The high hope scorning storms and fears,
Upbraiding time; this white muffled walk
Again I'll tread, and see here and there
Those lighted windows' christmas-glare,
That unredeemed cad by the wet coach-stand,
And the lamps obscure up the dreamy Strand!

Glorious night! to be sure the sky
Is falling, the winds chill,—what care I,
With love for a cloak against destiny.
Good passing year! you have not raised
My stature, nor brought aught about
For which I might be praised,
Yet good old year, when I walk out
I feel as if I was not quite
The same as on last new-year's night.
Not that I hold my head more high
Or dare laugh at Fortune, certainly!
Not that her buffets hit less fair,
But wounds heal again, and I take no care;
And surely her smiles now are far more bright,
And sunshine of heart with its melody
Floats before the murkiest sky.
The stars too, when night slumber brings,
If indeed these ten months past
Sleep hath ever o'er me cast
Her sceptre,—whisper wondrous things.
Yes! like a glorious long summer even,
A deep, rich, wide, and sensuous heaven,
Thou'st been. Thou shadow of a shade
In the garments of our souls arrayed,
We are thy slaves, the slaves of time,
Runners by time's chariot dust
With moan and prayer, or song and rhyme;
Still thinking thus and thus we must
Attain and triumph, but the lance
Slips through our hands when we would strike,
And something else, oh, all unlike
Our hope is what we have attained,
Given by the passing god, not gained
By us. Then thanks for the crown, say I,
The crown thou hast placed on my Psyche's head,
Thanks for thy gifts, good destiny,
Heart-gifts that in their first bold bloom
Perennial, evermore shall shed
Light and medicinal perfume.

Then stoop to thy melodious bier,
All folded white in the snow, old year!
Hark, at once from left and right
The steeple tongues salute the night,
Cloudy voices east and west
Pass wandering, each a funeral guest,
Ah, now St. Paul's great angel flies,
And like the shepherd of the skies,
Drives them before him, he the last
Falls over the horizon of the past:
So is the old year knelled and blessed.