The Child Year

I

"Dying of hunger and sorrow:
I die for my youth I fear!"
Murmured the midnight-haunting
Voice of the stricken Year.

There like a child it perished
In the stormy thoroughfare:
The snow with cruel whiteness
Had aged its flowing hair.

Ah, little Year so fruitful,
Ah, child that brought us bliss,
Must we so early lose you -
Our dear hopes end in this?

II

"Too young am I, too tender,
To bear earth's avalanche
Of wrong, that grinds down life-hope,
And makes my heart's-blood blanch.

"Tell him who soon shall follow
Where my tired feet have bled,
He must be older, shrewder,
Hard, cold, and selfish-bred -

"Or else like me be trampled
Under the harsh world's heel.
'Tis weakness to be youthful;
'Tis death to love and feel."

III

Then saw I how the New Year
Came like a scheming man,
With icy eyes, his forehead
Wrinkled by care and plan

For trade and rule and profit.
To him the fading child
Looked up and cried, "Oh, brother!"
But died even while it smiled.

Down bent the harsh new-comer
To lift with loving arm
The wanderer mute and fallen;
And lo! his eyes were warm;

All changed he grew; the wrinkles
Vanished: he, too, looked young -
As if that lost child's spirit
Into his breast had sprung.

So are those lives not wasted,
Too frail to bear the fray.
So Years may die, yet leave us
Young hearts in a world grown gray.