January 7.
1826. Distaff’s Day.[19]
STANZAS ON THE NEW YEAR.
I stood between the meeting years,
The coming and the past,
And I ask’d of the future one,
Wilt thou be like the last?
The same in many a sleepless night,
In many an anxious day?
Thank Heaven! I have no prophet’s eye
To look upon thy way!
For Sorrow like a phantom sits
Upon the last Year’s close.
How much of grief, how much of ill,
In its dark breast repose!
Shadows of faded Hopes flit by,
And ghosts of Pleasures fled:
How have they chang’d from what they were!
Cold, colourless, and dead.
I think on many a wasted hour,
And sicken o’er the void;
And many darker are behind,
On worse than nought employ’d.
Oh Vanity! alas, my heart!
How widely hast thou stray’d
And misused every golden gift
For better purpose made!