DIRGE FOR THE YEAR.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

ORPHAN hours, the year is dead,

Come and sigh, come and weep!

Merry hours smile instead,

For the year is but asleep. See, it smiles as it is sleeping, Mocking your untimely weeping.

As an earthquake rocks a corse
In its coffin in the clay,

So White Winter, that rough nurse,
Rocks the death-cold year to-day;

Solemn hours! wait aloud

For your mother in her shroud.

As the wild air stirs and sways

The tree-swung cradle of a child,

So the breath of these rude days

Rocks the year:-be calm and mild, Trembling hours, she will arise

With new love within her

January gray is here,

eyes.

Like a sexton by her grave;

February bears the bier,

March with grief doth howl and rave,

And April weeps-but, O, ye hours,
Follow with May's fairest flowers.

FULL knee-deep lies the winter snow,

And the winter winds are wearily sighing:

Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
And tread softly, and speak low,
For the Old year lies a-dying.

Old year, you must not die;
You came to us so readily,
You lived with us so steadily,
Old year, you shall not die.

THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR.

He lieth still: he doth not move:

He will not see the dawn of day.

He hath no other life above.

He gave me a friend, and a true, true love,
And the New year will take 'em away.
Old year, you must not go;

So long as you have been with us
Such joy as you have seen with us
Old year, you shall not go.

He frothed his bumpers to the brim;
A jollier year we shall not see.
But though his eyes are waxing dim,
And though his foes speak ill of him,

He was a friend to me.

Old year, you shall not die;

He was full of joke and jest,

But all his merry quips are o'er.

To see him die, across the waste

His son and heir doth ride post-haste,

But he'll be dead before.

Every one for his own.

The night is starry and cold, my friend,
And the New year blithe and bold, my friend,
Comes up to take his own.

How hard he breathes! over the snow

I heard just now the crowing cock.

The shadows flicker to and fro:

The cricket chirps: the light burns low:
'Tis nearly twelve o'clock.

Shake hands, before you die.

Old Year, we'll dearly rue for
What is it we can do for you?
Speak out before you die.

His face is growing sharp and thin.
Alack! our friend is gone.
Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:
Step from the corpse, and let him in

That standeth there alone,

And waiteth at the door.

you:

There's a new foot on the floor, my friend,
And a new face at the door, my friend,

A new face at the door.

NEW YEAR'S DAY.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE.

WHILE the bald trees stretch forth their long lank arms,

And starving birds peck nigh the reeky farms:
While houseless cattle paw the yellow field,

Or coughing shiver in the pervious bield,

And nought more gladsome in the hedge is seen,
Than the dark holly's grimly glistening green-

At such a time, the ancient year goes by

To join its parents in eternity

At such a time the merry year is born,

Like the bright berry from the naked thorn.

NEW YEAR'S DAY.

The bells ring out; the hoary steeple rocks—
Hark! the long story of a score of clocks;
For, once a year, the village clocks agree,
E'en clocks unite to sound the hour of glee-
And every cottage has a light awake,
Unusual stars long flicker o'er the lake.
The moon on high, if any moon be there,
May peep, or wink, no mortal now will care,
For 't is the season, when the nights are long,
There's time, e'er morn, for each to sing his song.

The year departs, a blessing on its head,
We mourn not for it, for it is not dead:

Dead? What is that? A word to joy unknown,
Which love abhors, and faith will never own.
A word, whose meaning sense could never find,
That has no truth in matter, nor in mind.
The passing breezes gone as soon as felt,
The flakes of snow that in the soft air melt,
The wave that whitening curls its frothy crest,
And falls to sleep upon its mother's breast.
The smile that sinks into a maiden's eye,
They come, they go, they change, they do not die.
So the Old year-that fond and formal name,

Is with us yet, another and the same.

And are the thoughts, that ever more are fleeing, The moments that make up our being's being, The silent workings of unconscious love,

Or the dull hate which clings and will not move,

In the dark caverns of the gloomy heart,
The fancies wild and horrible, which start