The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1876-01-06
TIE CLOSING YEAR.
BY GEORGE d. PRENTICE.

Tis midnights s holy hour, and silence now
Is brooding like gentle spirit. DER
The still and pulseless world. Hark on th
winds.
The bcll's deep tones arc swelling; tits the kne
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 stirred
As by mouIner's sigh. and yon cloud
That floats so still and placidly through heave
The spirits Of the Seasons seem to stand
Young Spring. bright Summer. Autumn's solem
| form,
And Winter. with his aged locks-and breathe
In mOurnful cadences, that come abroad
Like the far wind -harp's wild, touching wall,
A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year.
/ Gone from the earth forever.
'Tis time
For memory and for tears. Within the deep.
Still chambers of the heart. spectcr 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 passed away,
And left no shadow of their loveliness
On the dead waste of life. The spectcr lifts
The cofin-lid of Hope, and Joy. and Love,
And bending mournfully above the pale.
Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead
flowers
Der 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 in each heart. In its swift course,
1t waved its scepter DER the beautiful.
And they arc not. 1t laid its pallid 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 resound. 1t passed DER
The battie-plain. where sword. and spear, and
shield
Flashed in the light of mid day. and the strength
Of serried hosts is shivered. and the grass.
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and mouldering skeleton. 1t came
AND faded like wreath of mist at eve;
Yet ere it melted in the viewless air,
1t heralded its millions to their home
In the dim land of dreams.
Remorseless Time!
Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe! What
Can stay him in his silent course or melt
His iron heart to pity? On. still on,
lie presses. and forever. The proud bird,
The condor of the Andes. that can soar
Through heaven 8 unfathomable depths, or brave
The fury of the northern hurricane,
And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home
Furls his broad wings at nightfall and sinks dow VIII
To rest upon the mountain crag: but Time
knows not the weight of sleep weariness,
And nights deep darkness has no chain to bind
His rushing pinion.
Revolutions sweep
Der the earth like troubled visions DER the breast
Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink
Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles
81 ring blazing from the ocean, and go back
To their mysterious caverns: mountains rear
To heaven their bold and blackened cliffe. and
Their tall heads to the plain; and empires rise,
the strong of hoary centuries,
And rush down. like the Alpine avalanche,
Startling the nations and the stars
7 on bright and glorious blazonry of God,
ihtter awhile in their eternal depths,
And. like the Pleiad. loveliest of their train.
shoot from their glorious spheres and pass away
70 darkle in the trackless void; yet Time,
Time, the tomb builder, holds his fierce career,
Dark. stern. all pitiless and pauses not,
Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path,
10 sit and muse. like other conquerors,
Jpon the fearful ruin he hath wrought.