"O Old Year,
From sightless eyes you force this tear:
Sorrows you've heaped upon head,
Losses you've gathered to drive me wild,
All that I lived for, loved, are dead,
Brother and sister, wife and child,
I, too, am perishing as well,
I shall share the toll of your passing bell."
Grieved and sad
For the sins and woes the Human had,
The Old Year strove to avert his eyes;
But fly or turn wherever he would
On his vexed ear smote the mingled cries
Of revel and new-made widowhood,
Of grief that would not be comforted,
With the loved and beautiful lying dead.
Evermore, every hour,
Rising from hovel, hall and bower,
Swelling the strain of discontent,
Gurgled the hopeless prayer for alms,
Rung out the wild oath impotent;
Echoed by some brief walls of calms
Straining the listener's shrinking ear
Like silence when thunderbolts are near.
95
