University of Virginia Library

It was the closing evening of the year,
The night that I was born. I laughed, and said,
“The old year brought me in his dying arms,
And laid me in your breast; his last task done,
He went away through whirls of blinding snow.”
She murmured, “'Tis the first time in these years
We cannot hold your birth-night as our wont,
With feast, and smiling friends, and quiet mirth
O'er-shadowed by the memory of the dead
Until 'tis almost sad. 'Tis sixteen years,
And every night I've looked upon your sleep
Although you knew it not. Of those who were
Dear to me on the night that you were born,
You only now remain.” I knew her thoughts,
“He wearies for us in the happy fields;
His bliss is incomplete till we are there.”
My mother spoke with heart far, far away.
“I count the years, as eagerly as one
Long separated from the friends he loves
Counts the slow milestones as he travels home.
Your life is all before you with its joy;
The only thing I covet is the grave.”
She kissed me, put her withered hand in mine.
Its touch brought tears. I thought of all the pain,
The sorrow which had grown up in her life
Through her long years of widowhood, like grass
In a deserted street. Then all at once
A hundred church-bells struck the hour of twelve;
A mighty shout went up, “The year is dead!”
There were glad footsteps on a thousand stairs,
And happy greetings in a thousand homes;
None said, God bless us. Bitterly I cried,
“What great unpardoned sin is on our race
That we are so accursed? Where'er we go,
Calamity glides ever in our track,
A ghost implacable. Were I to die
On this great night when Christendom is glad,
I would be all unpitied and unknown,
As a forgotten captive, or a worm
That dies unheard of underneath the ground.”
But she reproached me with her silent eyes.