Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1907-01-09
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The Closing Year
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The Closing Year.
IT'S midnight's holy hour, and silence
now
Is brooding like a gentle spirit Ger
The still and pulseless world. Hark on
the winds
The BELLS deep tones are swelling. IT'S
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; the air Is
stirred
As by a mourner's sigh, and on yon cloud
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 it's aged locks-and
breathe
In mOurnful cadences that come abroad
Like the far wind-harp's wild and touch
ing wall,
A melancholy dirge DER the dead year
Gone from earth forever.
IT'S a time
For memory and for tears. Within the
deep,
Still chambers of the heart spectre dim,
Whose tones are like the wizards 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. That spectre
lifts
The coffin lid of Hope and Love and Joy,
And, bending mournfully above the pale,
Sweet forms that slumber there, scat
tiers dead flowers
Der what has passed to nothingness.
The Year
Has gone, and with it many a glorious
throng
Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each
brow,
It's shadows in each heart In its swift
course
1t waved its sceptre DER the beautiful,
And they are not. 1t laid its pallid hand
Upon the strong man. And the naughty
form
Is fallen and the flashing eye is dim.
It trod the hall of revelry, where throng-
The bright and joyous and the fearful
&C stricken ones is heard where erst the
song
And reckless shout resounded.
1t passed Ger
The battle plain, where sword and spear
and shield
Flashed 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 moldering skeleton. 1t
came
And faded like wreath of mist at eve,
Yet ere it melted in the viewless air
1t heralded it's millions to their home
In the dim land of dreams.
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 caverns; mountains
rear
To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs
oOd how
Their tall heads to the plain; new EN-.
pires 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 while in their eternal depths,
And, like the Pleiades, loveliest of their
train,
Shoot from their glorious spheres and
pass away
To 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
To sit and muse like other conquerors,
Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought.
George d. Prentice.