| |
| ’T IS midnight’s holy hour,—and silence now | |
| Is brooding like a gentle spirit o’er | |
| The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds | |
| The bell’s deep tones are swelling,—’t is the knell | |
| Of the departed year. No funeral train | 5 |
| Is sweeping past; yet, on the stream and wood, | |
| With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest | |
| Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred | |
| As by a mourner’s sigh; and on yon cloud | |
| That floats so still and placidly through heaven, | 10 |
| The spirits of the seasons seem to stand,— | |
| Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn’s solemn form, | |
| And Winter with its aged locks,—and breathe, | |
| In mournful cadences that come abroad | |
| Like the far wind-harp’s wild and touching wail, | 15 |
| A melancholy dirge o’er the dead year, | |
Gone from the earth forever.
’T is a time | |
| For memory and for tears. Within the deep, | |
| Still chambers of the heart, a spectre dim, | |
| Whose tones are like the wizard’s voice of Time | 20 |
| Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold | |
| And solemn finger to the beautiful | |
| And holy visions that have passed away, | |
| And left no shadow of their loveliness | |
| On the dead waste of life. That spectre lifts | 25 |
| The coffin-lid of Hope and Joy and Love, | |
| And bending mournfully above the pale, | |
| Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers | |
O’er what has passed to nothingness.
The year | |
| Has gone, and with it, many a glorious throng | 30 |
| Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow, | |
| Its shadow in each heart. In its swift course | |
| It waved its sceptre o’er the beautiful, | |
| And they are not. It laid its pallid hand | |
| Upon the strong man, and the haughty form | 35 |
| Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim. | |
| It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged | |
| The bright and joyous, and the tearful wail | |
| Of stricken ones is heard where erst the song | |
And reckless shout resounded.
It passed o’er | 40 |
| The battle-plain where sword and spear and shield | |
| Flashed in the light of midday, and the strength | |
| Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass, | |
| Green from the soil of carnage, waves above | |
| The crushed and moldering skeleton. It came, | 45 |
| And faded like a wreath of mist at eve; | |
| Yet ere it melted in the viewless air | |
| It heralded its millions to their home | |
In the dim land of dreams.
Remorseless Time! | |
| Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe!—what power | 50 |
| Can stay him in his silent course, or melt | |
| His iron heart to pity? On, still on, | |
| He presses, and forever. The proud bird, | |
| The condor of the Andes, that can soar | |
| Through heaven’s unfathomable depths, or brave | 55 |
| The fury of the northern hurricane, | |
| And bathe his plumage in the thunder’s home, | |
| Furls his broad wings at nightfall, and sinks down | |
| To rest upon his mountain crag,—but Time | |
| Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness, | 60 |
| And night’s deep darkness has no chain to bind | |
His rushing pinions.
Revolutions sweep | |
| O’er earth, like troubled visions o’er the breast | |
| Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink | |
| Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles | 65 |
| Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back | |
| To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear | |
| To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow | |
| Their tall heads to the plain; new empires rise, | |
| Gathering the strength of hoary centuries, | 70 |
| And rush down like the Alpine avalanche, | |
| Startling the nations; and the very stars, | |
| Yon bright and burning blazonry of God, | |
| Glitter awhile in their eternal depths, | |
| And, like the Pleiads, loveliest of their train, | 75 |
| Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away | |
| To darkle in the trackless void,—yet Time, | |
| Time the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career, | |
| Dark, stern, all-pitiless, and pauses not | |
| Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path | 80 |
| To sit and muse, like other conquerors, | |
| Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought. | |
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