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
        Flowery garlands weaves.
But the flowers of the future, tho' fragrant and fair,
With the past's withered leaflets may never compare;
For dear is each dead leaf -- and dearer each thorn --
In the wreaths which the brows of our past years have worn.

        Yea! men will cling
        With a love to the last,
        And wildly fling
        Their arms round their past!
As the vine that clings to the oak that falls;
As the ivy twines round the crumbled walls;
For the dust of the past some hearts higher prize
Than the stars that flash out from the future's bright skies.

        And why not so?
        The old, Old Years,
        They knew and they know
        All our hopes and fears;
We walked by their side, and we told them each grief,
And they kissed off our tears while they whispered relief;
And the stories of hearts that may not be revealed
In the hearts of the dead years are buried and sealed.

        Let the New Year sing
        At the Old Year's grave:
        Will the New Year bring
        What the Old Year gave?
Ah! the Stranger-Year trips over the snows,
And his brow is wreathed with many a rose:
But how many thorns do the roses conceal
Which the roses, when withered, shall so soon reveal?

        Let the New Year smile
        When the Old Year dies;
        In how short a while
        Shall the smiles be sighs?
Yea! Stranger-Year, thou hast many a charm,
And thy face is fair and thy greeting warm,
But, dearer than thou -- in his shroud of snows --
Is the furrowed face of the Year that goes.

        Yea! bright New Year,
        O'er all the earth,
        With song and cheer,
        They will hail thy birth;
They will trust thy words in a single hour,
They will love thy face, they will laud thy power;
For the ~New~ has charms which the ~Old~ has not,
And the Stranger's face makes the Friend's forgot.

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

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English

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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.

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 Old Year And The New.

    I.

    As one in sorrow looks upon
        The dead face of a loyal friend,
    By the dim light of New Year's dawn
        I saw the Old Year end.

    Upon the pallid features lay
        The dear old smile - so warm and bright
    Ere thus its cheer had died away
        In ashes of delight.

    The hands that I had learned to love
        With strength of passion half divine,
    Were folded now, all heedless of
        The emptiness of mine.

    The eyes that once had shed their bright
        Sweet looks like sunshine, now were dull,
    And ever lidded from the light
        That made them beautiful.


    II.

    The chimes of bells were in the air,
        And sounds of mirth in hall and street...

James Whitcomb Riley

Reverie ["We laugh when our souls are the saddest,"]

We laugh when our souls are the saddest,
We shroud all our griefs in a smile;
Our voices may warble their gladdest,
And our souls mourn in anguish the while.

And our eyes wear a summer's bright glory,
When winter is wailing beneath;
And we tell not the world the sad story
Of the thorn hidden back of the wreath.

Ah! fast flow the moments of laughter,
And bright as the brook to the sea
But ah! the dark hours that come after
Of moaning for you and for me.

Yea, swift as the sunshine, and fleeting
As birds, fly the moments of glee!
And we smile, and mayhap grief is sleeting
Its ice upon you and on me.

And the clouds of the tempest are shifting
O'er the heart, tho' the face may be bright;
And the snows of woe's winter are drifting

Abram Joseph Ryan

A Reverie ["Those hearts of ours -- how strange! how strange!"]

Those hearts of ours -- how strange! how strange!
How they yearn to ramble and love to range
Down through the vales of the years long gone,
Up through the future that fast rolls on.

To-days are dull -- so they wend their ways
Back to their beautiful yesterdays;
The present is blank -- so they wing their flight
To future to-morrows where all seems bright.

Build them a bright and beautiful home,
They'll soon grow weary and want to roam;
Find them a spot without sorrow or pain,
They may stay a day, but they're off again.

Those hearts of ours -- how wild! how wild!
They're as hard to tame as an Indian child;
They're as restless as waves on the sounding sea,
Like the breeze and the bird are they fickle and free.

Those hearts of ours -- how l...

Abram Joseph Ryan

The Old Year.

    The old year is dying,
    Its last hour is hieing
        Over the verge;
    The night winds are plying,
    And are mournfully sighing
        Its funeral dirge.

    And now, in its even,
    While its spirit is riven
        Through the bright zone,
    Beyond the heaven
    To whence it was given -
        To the unknown.

    Its sadness in ending
    Like a cloud is descending
        Over my soul,
    And the thoughts that are pending
    With the low winds are blending,
        Helping their dole.

    A year of existence
    Has passed to the distance
        Ne'er to return:
    To the right was resistance,
    From duty desistance,
        Nor would I learn.

    But duty neglected

W. M. MacKeracher