The Hartford herald., 1885-12-23

lis midnight's holy hour-snd silence now
Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, DER
The still and pulseless world. Hark on the
winds
The bells deep tones are sweIling-'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 a pale, spotless shroud I; the air is stirred
As by a mourner's sigh; and on yon cloud.
That floats so still and placidly through
heaven,
The spirits the season seem to stand
Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's
solemn form,
And Winter with his aged locks; and breathe,
In mornful eadenees, that come abroad
Like the far ind-harp's wild and touching
wall,
A melancholy dirge DER the dead year,
Gone from the earth forever
Tis time
For memory and for tears. Within the deep,
still CLEANERS Of the heart, specter 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 Ioveliness
On the dead waste OF life. That specter Iifts
The coffin-lid of Hope. and Joy, and Love.
And, bending mournfully above the pale,
sweet forms that slumber there, scattering
dead flowers
Ger what has passed to nothIngness
The year
Has gone, and with IL, many a glorious
thrOng
Ofhappy dreams. Its marx is on each brow,
Its shadow In each heart. In its swim course
Ii waved its scepter DER the beautiful
And they are not IL laid its pallid hand
Upon the strong man 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 wall
OF stricken ones Is heard. where erst the song
And reckless shout resounded.
IL passed DER
The battle-plain, where sword. and spear,
and shield,
Flashed in the light of mid-day-and the
strength
of serted hosts is shiveret, and the grass,
Green from the soil Of carnage, waves above
The crushed and moldering skeleton. IL came
And faded like a wreath of mist at eve,
Yet, ere il melted in the viewless air,
Ii heralded its millions to their home
In the dim land of dreams
Ren.orseless Time!
Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe what
power
IN fr.h n al
His iron heart to pityr On. still on
He presses, and forever. The proud bird,
The condor of the Andes, that can soar
Through heavens unfathomsble depths. OF
brave
The fury of the northern hurricane,
And bath his plumage In the thundeT's
home,
Furls his broad wings at nightfalI, 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 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 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 their eternal depths,
And, like the Pleiad, loveliest Of the train,
shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass
away,
To darkle In the trackless void yet Time
Time, the tOmb-bullder, holds his fierce ca
reer,
Dark, stern, pitiless, 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