The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1884-12-31
Select Ntlistcllamp.
The Closing Year.

IT'S midnghts holy hour-and silence now
Is broodng, like gentle spirit DER
The still and pulseless world. Harkl on the winds
The bells deep tones 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 stirred
As by mourner's sigh and on yon cloud,
That floats so still and pacidly through heaven,
The spirits OF the seasons seem to stand
Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn
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 DER the dead year.
Gone from the earth forever.
IT'S time
For memory and for tears. within the deep,
Still chambers of the heart n 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 passed away,
And left no shadow OF their lovcness
On the dead waste of life. That spectre lifts
The cofiin-d of Hope, and Joy, and Love,
And, bending mourufully, above the pale,
Sweet forms that slumber there scatters dead flower
Ger 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 sceptre DER the beautiful
And they 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 ioyous-and the fearful wall
OF stricken ones is heard, where erst the song
And restless shout resounded.
1t passed DER
The battle plain, where sword and spear and shield
Flashed in the light of midday the strength
OF serred hosts is shvered, and the grass,
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and moldering skeleton. 1t came,
And faded like a wreath of mist at eve
Yet ere 1t melted in the viewess air,
1t heralded its millions to their home
In the dim land of dreams.
Remorseless Timei
Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe-what power
Can stay him in his silent course. or melt
His iron heart to pity? on, still on
He presses, and forever. The proud bird
The condor of the Andes, that can soar
Through heavens unfathonasle depths, or brave
The fury of the northern hurricane,
And battle his plumage in the thunder's home,
Furls his broad wings at nightfall, and sinks down
To rest upon the mountain crag-but Time
Knows not the weight of sleep and WEAKNESS,
And nights deep darkness has no chain to bind
His rushing pinions.
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 bow
Their tall heads to the plain new empires rise,
Gathering the strength of hoary centuries,
And rush down like the Alpine avalanche,
Startling the nations-and the very stars,
Yon bright and burning blazonry OF God,
Glitter awhile in the eternal depths,
And. like the Pleiad, loveest of their train,
Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away,
To darkle in the trackless void; yet Time
Time, the tomb-buider, holds its fierce career,
Dark stern, apitess, and pauses not
Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path
To sit and muse, like other conquerors,
Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought
-George D. Prentice.