New Year

Each year cometh with all his days,
Some are shadowed and some are bright;
He beckons us on until he stays
Kneeling with us 'neath Christmas night.

Kneeling under the stars that gem
The holy sky, o'er the humble place,
When the world's sweet Child of Bethlehem
Rested on Mary, full of grace.

Not only the Bethlehem in the East,
But altar Bethlehem everywhere,
When the ~Gloria~ of the first great feast
Rings forth its gladness on the air.

Each year seemeth loath to go,
And leave the joys of Christmas day;
In lands of sun and in lands of snow,
The year still longs awhile to stay.

A little while, 'tis hard to part
From this Christ blessed here below,
Old year! and in thy aged heart
I hear thee sing so sweet and low.

A song like this, but sweeter far,
And yet as if with a human tone,
Under the blessed Christmas star,
And thou descendest from thy throne.

"A few more days and I am gone,
The hours move swift and sure along;
Yet still I fain would linger on
In hearing of the Christmas song.

"I bow to Him who rules all years;
Thrice blessed is His high behest;
Nor will He blame me if, with tears,
I pass to my eternal rest.

"Ah, me! to altars every day
I brought the sun and the holy Mass;
The people came by my light to pray,
While countless priests did onward pass.

"The words of the Holy Thursday night
To one another from east to west;
And the holy Host on the altar white
Would take its little half-hour's rest.

"And every minute of every hour
The Mass bell rang with its sound so sweet,
While from shrine to shrine, with tireless power,
And heaven's love, walked the nailed feet.

"I brought the hours for ~Angelus~ bells,
And from a thousand temple towers
They wound their sweet and blessed spell
Around the hearts of all the hours.

"Every day has a day of grace
For those who fain would make them so;
I saw o'er the world in every place
The wings of guardian angels glow.

"Men! could you hear the song I sing --
But no, alas! it cannot be so!
My heir that comes would only bring
Blessings to bless you here below."

    *    *    *    *    *

Seven days passed; the gray, old year
Calls to his throne the coming heir;
Falls from his eyes the last, sad tear,
And lo! there is gladness everywhere.

Singing, I hear the whole world sing,
Afar, anear, aloud, alow:
"What to us will the New Year bring!"
Ah! would that each of us might know!

Is it not truth? as old as true?
List ye, singers, the while ye sing!
Each year bringeth to each of you
What each of you will have him bring.

The year that cometh is a king,
With better gifts than the old year gave;
If you place on his fingers the holy ring
Of prayer, the king becomes your slave.

Abram Joseph Ryan

Abram Joseph Ryan was an American poet, Catholic priest, and former Confederate chaplain. Known as the 'Poet-Priest of the South,' his most famous work is 'The Conquered Banner.' Ryan wrote many poems that reflected his Southern heritage and the American Civil War. His works often possess a spiritual and melancholic tone, inspired by the losses of the war and his religious faith. In addition to poetry, he also wrote essays and gave public speeches.

Abram Joseph Ryan

A Child's Wish

Abram Joseph Ryan, Simple Poetry

The Old Year and the New

Abram Joseph Ryan, Simple Poetry

Farewells

Abram Joseph Ryan, Simple Poetry

The Pilgrim (A Christmas Legend for Children)

Abram Joseph Ryan, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Old Year and the New

        How swift they go,
        Life's many years,
        With their winds of woe
        And their storms of tears,
And their darkest of nights whose shadowy slopes
Are lit with the flashes of starriest hopes,
And their sunshiny days in whose calm heavens loom
The clouds of the tempest -- the shadows of the gloom!

        And ah! we pray
        With a grief so drear,
        That the years may stay
        When their graves are near;
Tho' the brows of To-morrows be radiant and bright,
With love and with beauty, with life and with light,
The dead hearts of Yesterdays, cold on the bier,
To the hearts that survive them, are evermore dear.

        For the hearts so true
        To each Old Year cleaves;
        Tho' the hand of the New<...

Abram Joseph Ryan

The Pilgrim (A Christmas Legend for Children)

The shades of night were brooding
O'er the sea, the earth, the sky;
The passing winds were wailing
In a low, unearthly sigh;
The darkness gathered deeper,
For no starry light was shed,
And silence reigned unbroken,
As the silence of the dead.

The wintry clouds were hanging
From the starless sky so low,
While 'neath them earth lay folded
In a winding shroud of snow.
'Twas cold, 'twas dark, 'twas dreary,
And the blast that swept along
The mountains hoarsely murmured
A fierce, discordant song.

And mortal men were resting
From the turmoil of the day,
And broken hearts were dreaming
Of the friends long passed away;
And saintly men were keeping
Their vigils through the night,
While angel spirits hovered near
Around thei...

Abram Joseph Ryan

The Immaculate Conception

Fell the snow on the festival's vigil
And surpliced the city in white;
I wonder who wove the pure flakelets?
Ask the Virgin, or God, or the night.

It fitted the Feast: 'twas a symbol,
And earth wore the surplice at morn,
As pure as the vale's stainless lily
For Mary, the sinlessly born;

For Mary, conceived in all sinlessness;
And the sun, thro' the clouds of the East,
With the brightest and fairest of flashes,
Fringed the surplice of white for the Feast.

And round the horizon hung cloudlets,
Pure stoles to be worn by the Feast;
While the earth and the heavens were waiting
For the beautiful Mass of the priest.

I opened my window, half dreaming;
My soul went away from my eyes,
And my heart began saying "Hail Marys"
Somewher...

Abram Joseph Ryan

Night After the Picnic

And "Happy! Happy! Happy!"
Rang the bells of all the hours;
"Shyly! Shyly! Shyly!"
Looked and listened all the flowers;
They were wakened from their slumbers,
By the footsteps of the fair;
And they smiled in their awaking
On the faces gathered there.

"Brightly! Brightly! Brightly!"
Looked the overhanging trees,
For beneath their bending branches
Floated tresses in the breeze.
And they wondered who had wandered
With such voices and so gay;
And their leaflets seemed to whisper
To each other: "Who are they?"

They were just like little children,
Not a sorrow's shade was there;
And "Merry! Merry! Merry!"
Rang their laughter thro' the air.
There was not a brow grief-darkened,
Was there there a heart in pain?
But "Happy! Happ...

Abram Joseph Ryan

Mobile Mystic Societies

The olden golden stories of the world,
    That stirred the past,
And now are dim as dreams,
The lays and legends which the bards unfurled
    In lines that last,
All -- rhymed with glooms and gleams.
Fragments and fancies writ on many a page
    By deathless pen,
And names, and deeds that all along each age,
    Thrill hearts of men.
And pictures erstwhile framed in sun or shade
    Of many climes,
And life's great poems that can never fade
    Nor lose their chimes;
And acts and facts that must forever ring
    Like temple bells,
That sound or seem to sound where angels sing
    Vesper farewells;
And scenes where smiles are strangely touching tears,
    'Tis ever thus,
Strange Mystics! in the meeting of the years
    Ye bring to us

Abram Joseph Ryan

The Legend Of The New Year.

I dreamed, and lo, I saw in my dream a beautiful gateway,
    Arched at the top, and crowned with turrets lance-windowed and olden,
    And sculptured in arabesque, all knotted and woven and spangled;
    A wonderful legend ran, in letters purple and golden
    Written in leaves and blossoms, inextricably intertangled,
A legend I could not resolve, crowning the gate so stately.

Like statues carven and niched in the front of some old cathedral,
    Four angels stood each in his turret, immovable warders,
    The first with reverend locks snow-white, and a silver volume
    Of beard that twinkled with frost, and hung to the icicled borders
    That fringed his girdle beneath: ancient his look was, and solemn,
Like a wrinkled and bearded saint blessing some worshipping bedral.

Kate Seymour Maclean