A strange voice out of the pallid heaven,
Twelve sobs it utters, and stops. Midnight!
’Tis the ominous Hail! and the stern Farewell!
Of Past and Present in passing flight.
This moment, herald of hope and doom,
That cries in our ears and then is gone,
Has marked for us in the awful volume
One step toward the infinite dark—or dawn!
A year is gone, and a year begins.
Ye wise ones, knowing in Nature’s scheme,
Oh tell us whither they go, the years
That drop in the gulfs of time and dream!
They go to the goal of all things mortal,
Where fade our destinies, scarce perceived,
To the dim abyss wherein time confounds them—
The hours we laughed and the days we grieved.
They go where the bubbles of rainbow break
We breathed in our youth of love and fame,
Where great and small are as one together,
And oak and windflower counted the same.
They go where follow our smiles and tears,
The gold of youth and the gray of age,
Where falls the storm and falls the stillness,
The laughter of spring and winter’s rage.
What hand shall gauge the depth of time
Or a little measure eternity?
God only, as they unroll before Him,
Conceives and orders the mystery.
A CHRISTMAS-EVE COURTIN’
The snow’d laid deep that winter from the middle of November;
The goin’, as I remember, was the purtiest kind of goin’;
An’ as the time drawed nigh fur turkeys an’ mince pie
The woods, all white an’ frosted, was a sight worth showin’.
The snow hung down the woodpiles all scalloped-like an’ curled.
You’d swear in all the world ther’ warn’t no fences any more.
The cows kep’ under cover, an’ the chickens scratched twice over
The yaller ruck of straw a-layin’ round the stable door.