The Opelousas courier., 1885-01-03
THE G. YEAR.

TIL CLOSING YEAR.
TITS ~midnights holy hour-and silence now
Is brooding, like a gentle spirit. DER
The still and pulseless world. Hank! on the
Winds the bells deep tones are sWelling-'tis a knell
OF the departed year. No funeral train
Is sweeping past; yet on the stream and wood,
With melancholy light the moonbeams rest
Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred D
AS by a mourner's sigh and on yon cloud, 2
That floats SO still and placidly through heaven,
The spirits of the seasons seem to stand
Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form,
And Winter, with his aged focks-and breathe
In mournful cadences, that come abroad
Like the far wind-harp's wild and touching wall,
4 melancholy dirge over the dead year,
Gone from the earth forever. -
For memory and for tears. Within the deep,
Still chambers of the heart, a spectre dim,
Whose tones are like the wizard 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 loneliness
On the dead waste of life. That spectre lifts
The coffin Of Hope, and JOY, and Love;
And bending mournfully above the pale,
Sweet forms, that slumber there, scatters dead flowers
Ger what has passed to nothingness.
Has gone, and with it, many "a glorious throng
Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow;
It's shadow in each hearth In it's swift course
It waved its sceptre DER the beautiful
And they are not. It laid its pallid hand
Upon the strong man-and the naughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.
1t trod the halls of reyery, where thronged
The bright and joyous-and the fearful wall
Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song
And reckless shout resounded.
Tt passed DER
The battle plain, where sword and spear and shield
Flashing in the light of midday-and the strength
OF serried hosts is shivered, and the grass,
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and Wondering skeleton. 1t came,
And faded, like a wreath at eve;
Yet,ere it melted in the viewless air,
1t heralded it's millions to their home.
Remorseless Time
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 unfathomable depths, or brave
: The fury of the Northern hurricane,
And battle its plumage in the thunders home,
Furls his broad wings at nightfall and sinks down
To rest upon his mountain crag-butT Time
Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness
And nights deep darkness has no chain to bind
His rushing pinions.
Revolutions sweep
Ger earth. like troubled visions Ger 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 eaverns 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 I'M their eternal depths,
And like the Pleiad, loVeliest of their train,
Shoot from their glorious spheres and pass away,
To darkle in the trackless void yet Time
Time, the tomb builder-lolds his fierce career,
Dark, stern, all-pitiless, and panses not
Amid the mighty wrecks that streW his path,
TO sit and muse like other conquerors,
Upon. the fearful ruin he has wrought.
me evening while sitting in Walkers wneeroom in Louisville, drin
impagne, George d Prentice, the great editor of the Courier. Journal,
Joyce, then 4 yonng officer in the Federal army stationed Mt the Kent,
ropolis, bow be came to write the famous poem, THE Closing of the vi
rat poenl,s said Prentice, who had become confidential after Joyce
ked it with AThanatopsis" as the greatest poem in the language,
ttu on the spur of the moment. and I dashed it off on. New Years n
as the dawn began to peep into the windows of my dirty editorial ro
paper had just gone to press when a crowd of newsboys came into
nrnin e New Yeac,s and thew lad -aatten natLinG -. .t -.-a