A happy New Year, and other verses

A HAPPY NEW YEAR AND OTHER VERSES
BY C. E. De La POER BERESFORD ETON COLLEGE SPOTTISWOODE & CO., LTD. 1913 TO MY DEAR WIFE
Old Place, 1913
My thanks are due to the Editors, “Blackwood’s Magazine,” “Country Life,” “The Londonderry Sentinel,” for their kindness in allowing me to reprint verses that have appeared in their publications.

To the young, to the brave and the strong, Before whom the future outspreads As a board all light-handed to sweep, The unknown, and the right and the wrong, A Happy New Year!
To the good, to the tender and true, Who have stood by our side on the path Of life’s follies and troubles and cares, The path that we all must pursue, A Happy New Year!
For the old, for the frail and the weak, To whom mem’ry calls up in a dream The never attained might have been , We with love and affection bespeak A Happy New Year!
Sleep! my darling, sleep! Bábochka Babyónka watches. Wind and eagle, woodcock brown, All of them come rushing down To the cot where baby slumbers. They have brought Babyónka sleep. O’er thy slumbers Saints are watching.
In Dariel’s rocky gorges deep, Where Terek’s water madly moves, There is a castle on the steep, The scene of Queen Tamára’s loves. She seemed to play an angel’s part; Black as a demon’s was her heart.
The weary traveller from below Looked on Tamára’s window-glow, And gazing on the twinkling light, Went in to sup and pass the night.
But as the rays of rosy dawn Gilded the mountains in the morn, Silence fell on Tamára’s halls, And Terek’s madly rushing wave A mangled corpse bore to its grave.