I said: “I have long been yearning,
New Year, to behold thy face.”
Pale grew the maid, and, turning,
She shrank from my close embrace,
And wept: “Oh! thou fickle hearted
The depth of my love to prove,
Yet ere from my bosom parted
To sigh for an untried love.
“I brought thee the rarest treasures
Time’s treasury could bestow;
I sated thy days with pleasures,
And guarded thy heart from woe.
“Thy wish I refused thee never.
I granted thee love and peace;
Yet thou scornest me now, or ever
My labor for thee doth cease.
“See, here are the gifts I showered
Thy life’s pathway upon,
And now that thou hast been dowered
With all, canst thou wish me gone?
“O thankless heart, wilt thou never
Be satisfied with thy lot,
Or must thou be pining ever
For joys that as yet are not?
“And turn from my fond embraces
An utter unknown to greet,
As a child a butterfly chases
Treading flowers beneath his feet?”
Then, like the great sun springing
Through night to a tropic dawn,
My heart, to the Old Year clinging,
Yearned for the joys nigh gone.
And oh, what a wave of sorrow
Passed over my grieving soul,
As I thought of the new to-morrow
That led to some unknown goal!
“Oh, stay,” I cried, soul-shaken,
“Heed not the flight of time,
Oh stay,”—But I was forsaken,
And heard the New Year chime.