Tried and untried humanity:
Age and Youth, Pleasure and Pain,
Braided at chance in a motley skein.
"Ill betide
Ye thankless ones!" the Old Year cried;
"Have I not given you night and day,
Over and over, score upon score,
Wherein to live, and love, and pray,
And suck the ripe world to its rotten core?
Yet do you reek if my reign be done?