Litchfield enquirer., 1851-01-09

The Closing Year.
BY GEORGE d. PRENTICE.

'IIs mldnIghts holy hour, and silence now
Is broOding like gentle spirit DER
The still and pulseless world. Hank on the
winds
The BELLS deep tones are swelling-'tis the
knell
OF the departed year. No funeral train
Is sweeping past; yet, on the stream and wood,
With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest,
Like pale, sPotless shroud. The air is stirr'j
As by mourner's sigh-and on yon cloud
That floats so still and placidly thro' heavens
The Spirits of the Seasons seem TO stand;
Young Spring, bright Summer. Autumn's SOL
emn form,
And Winter with his aged locks-and breathe
In mournful cadences that come abroad
Like the far wind harp's wild and touching
wall,
A melancholy dirge Ger the dead year
Gone from the earth forever.
IT'S time
For memory and for tears. Within the deep
Still chambers Of the heart, spectre dim,
Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time
Heard from the tomb Of Ages, points its cold
And solemn finger to the beautiful
And holy visions that have past away,
And left no traces of their loveliness
On the dead waste of life. That spectre lifts
The coffin-ld OF Hope and Joy and Love,
And bending mournfuly above the pale
Swee, forms that slumber there, scatters dead
flowers
Over what has passed TO nothingness. The year
Has gone, and with it many glorious throng
OF happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow
Its shadow on each heart. In its swift course
1t waved its sceptre Ger the beautiful,
And they are not. 1t laid its paid hand
Upon the strong man. and the naughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.
1t trod the hall Of revelry, where thronged
The bright and joyous-and the fearful wall
OF stricken ones is heard. where erst the song
And reckless shout resounded. 1t passed o'er
The battle plain, where sword, and spear, and
shield, asss,4ss -
Flashed in the light Of mid day; & the strength
Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass,
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and moldering skeleton. 1t came
And faded like wreath Of mist at eve;
Yet ere it melted in the viewless air,
II heralded its millions to their home
In the dim land of dreams.
Rcmorseless Time
Fierce Spi,it OF be.Glass and Scythe-what
power
Can stay him in h is silent course. or melt
His iron heart 10 pity On, still on,
He presses, and forever. The proud bird,
The condor of the Andes, that can soar
Thro' heavens unfathomable depths, or brave
The fury of the Northern hurricane.
And battle his plumage in the thunder's home,
Furls his broad wings at nlghtfall and sinks
down
To rest upon his mountain crag-but Time
Knows not the weight of sleep or WEAKNESS,
And nights deep darkness has no chain to bind
His rushing pinion. Revolutions sweep
Ger earth like troubled visions DER the breast
Of dreaming sorrow; Cities rise and sink
Like bubbles on the water fiery Isles
Spring blazing from the Ocean. and go back
To their mysterious caverns Mountains rear
To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and
Their tall heads TO the plain: new Empires
rise.
Gathering tn e strength Of hoary centuries,
And rush down like the Alpine avalanche,
Startling the nations-and even the very Stars,
Yon bright and burning blAzonry Of God,
Glitter awhile in their eternal depths,
And like the Pleiad loveliest of their train,
Shoot from their glorious spheres and pass a.
way
To darkle in their trackless void-Yet Time,
Time, the tomb-buijer, holds his fierce career,
Dark. stern, all pitiless, and pauses not
Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path,
To sit and muse, like 9th er conquerers,
Upon the tea rful ruin he has wrought