Addressed to the Customers of the Freeman's Journal, by the Lad who carries it
January 8, 1783
Let those who will, in hackney'd rhyme
And common cant, take up your time,
And even the muse's aid implore
To tell you what you knew before,
The days are short and nights are long,
The weather cold and hunger strong,
The markets high—and such like stuff—
I'm sure you know it well enough;—
Untaught by us, I dare to say,
You hit, exactly, New Year's day,
And knew at least as well as we
The present year is eighty-three;—
(Such simple things as these to tell
A mere drum head would do as well—)
All this I knew you knew before,
And therefore knock'd not at your door
Upon the individual day
When eighty-three came into play,
With verses for the purpose plann'd
Bidding you gravely watch your sand,
Since death is always near at hand;
All this I left to those whose trade is
To threaten beaus and frighten ladies,
And brought my papers, (swiftly speeding)
The Freeman's Journal, for your reading.
Unhappy Journal, doom'd by fate
To meet with unrelenting hate,
From those who can their venom spit,
Yet condescend to steal your wit;
While Timon, with malicious spirit,
Allows you not a grain of merit,
While he an idle pomp assumes
Let him return his borrow'd plumes,
And you will find the insect creeping
With not a feather worth the keeping.
But this is neither here nor there,
May quarrels past dissolve in air;
In Stygian waves of sable hue
Be all absorb'd with Eighty-Two,
Or, lost on Lethe's silent shore,
Disgrace our rising State no more.
Another word I meant to say,
(Kind customers, have patience, pray,
My subject is the New Year's Day)
How came it that mistaken man
Has thus inverted nature's plan,
And contradicted common reason
By making this the mirthful season,
When all is dreary, dull, and dead,
The sun to southern climates fled
To dart his fierce and downright beams
Intensely on Brazilian streams;
No daisies on the frozen plain,
No daffodils to please the swain,
The limpid wave compell'd to freeze,
And not a leaf upon the trees!—
'Tis wrong—the very birds will say,
Their New Year is the bloom of May;
Then nature calls to soft delights,
And they obey as she invites.
And yet this happiness below,
Which all would gain but few know how,
Is not to time or place confin'd,
'Tis seated only in the mind;
Let seasons vary as they will,
Contentment leaves us happy still,
Makes life itself pass smooth away,
Makes every hour a New Year's day.
[213] Text of this and the preceding poem from the edition of 1786. The last twenty-four lines of the above were republished in the edition of 1795, under the title "On the New-Year's Festival."
POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY[214]
HUGH GAINE'S LIFE[A]
City of New-York, Jan. 1, 1783.[B]
To the Senate[C] of York, with all due submission,
Of honest Hugh Gaine the humble Petition;[215]
An account of his Life he will also prefix,
And some trifles that happened in seventy-six;
He hopes that your Honours will take no offence,
If he sends you some groans of contrition from hence,
And, further, to prove that he's truly sincere,
He wishes you all a happy New Year.