Mineral Point tribune. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1854-1858, 1856-01-15
THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR.
BIZ GEO. d. PRENTICE.

lis midnight's holy hour, and silence now
Is brooding like gentle spirit DER
The still and ruiseless world Hark' on the winds
The bells tevp tones swelling It's the knel
OF the departed year. 80 funeral train
Is sweeping past, yet, the stream and wood
With melancholy Eight the Inoonbeams rest,
Like pale, spotless shroud the air is stirred
As by mourner's sigh and yon cloud,
That floats SO still and plaeidly through heaven,
The spirits of the seem to stand;
Young spring, bright summer auturnn's solemn
form,
And winter with aged iocss,-and breathe,
In mournful cadenees that come abroad
Like the far wind harp's wild and touching wall,
melancholy dirge Ger the dead year
Gone from the earth forever.
It's a time
For memory and for tears Within the deep,
Still chambers of the heart spectre dim
Whose tones are ike the wizard voice of Time
Heard fro1a tho tomb Of ages, points its cold
And solemn finger to the beautiful
And holy visions that haze passed away,
And lei shadow of their loneliness
On the dead waste of life.
That spectre lifts
The coflin-lid of hope, and JOY, and love,
And, bending noufnfilly above the pale,
Sweet forms that sumber there scatter dead flowers
Has gone: and with it many glorious throng
OF happy dreams. lis mark is on the brow,
Its shadow in each heart.
In its swift course,
1t waved its sccptre DER the beautiful;
And they not 1t laid its paIlid hand
Upon the strong mani and the naughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.
Il trod the hall of revelry, where thronged
The bright and joyous and the fearful vail
ofstricken ones IS heard where erst the song
And reckless shout resounded.
1t passed DER
The battleplain where sword aud spear, and shield,
Flashed in the light of midday and the strength
OF serried hosts is shvered, and the gras.
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and moud'ring sketeten 1t came
And faded like wreathe OF mist at eve
Yet, ere il melted in the vievless air,
1t heralded its millions to their home
In the dim land Of creams
Remorseless Timel
Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe what power
Can stay him in his silent course, melt
His iron heart 10 pity On, still on
HI presses, and forever. The proud bird
Tho Condor of the Andes, that can soar
Through heaven unfathomable depths or bravo
The fury of the northern hurricane.
And bathe his plunage in the thunders home,
Furls his broad wings AZ nightfalI and sinks down
To rest upon his mountain crag but Time
KNOWS not the weight Of sleep WEAKNESS
And Nights deep darkness las no chain to bind
His rushing piuion.
Revolutions sweep
Ger the earth, like troubled visions Ger the breast
or dreaming sorrow cities rise and sink
Like bubbles the water: fery isles
Spring blazing from the ocean, and 90 back
To their mysterious eaverns mountains rear
To heaven their bald and IIackened cliffs and bow
1heir tall heads to the plain empires rise
Gathering the strength Of hoary centuries,
And rush down the Alpine avalanche,
Startling the nations.
Yet time,
Time, the torb-builler, holds his fierce career,
Dark, stern. all pi:.ess and pauses not
Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path
To sit and muse, like other conquerors
Upon the fearful ruin he haz yv-orvIlt