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Home  »  The World’s Best Poetry  »  The Closing Year

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Poems of Sentiment: III. Memory

The Closing Year

George Denison Prentice (1802–1870)

’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

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,

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,

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

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

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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,

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

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,

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,

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

To sit and muse, like other conquerors,

Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought.