page: 84
A PSALM FOR NEW YEAR’S EVE.
1855.
- A FRIEND stands at the door;
- In either tight‐closed hand
- Hiding rich gifts, three hundred and three score:
- Waiting to strew them daily o’er the land
- Even as seed the sower.
- Each drops he, treads it in and passes by:
- It cannot be made fruitful till it die.
- O good New Year, we clasp
- This warm shut hand of thine,
- Loosing forever, with half sigh, half gasp,
- That which from ours falls like dead fingers’ twine:
- Ay, whether fierce its grasp
- Has been, or gentle, having been, we know
- That it was blessed: let the Old Year go.
- O New Year, teach us faith!
- The road of life is hard:
- When our feet bleed and scourging winds us scathe,
- Point thou to Him whose visage was more marred
- Than any man’s: who saith
- page: 85
- “Make straight paths for your feet”—and to the opprest—
- “Come ye to Me, and I will give you rest.”
- Yet hang some lamp‐like hope
- Above this unknown way,
- Kind year, to give our spirits freer scope
- And our hands strength to work while it is day.
- But if that way must slope
- Tombward, O bring before our fading eyes
- The lamp of life, the Hope that never dies.
- Comfort our souls with love,—
- Love of all human kind;
- Love special, close—in which like sheltered dove
- Each weary heart its own safe nest may find;
- And love that turns above
- Adoringly; contented to resign
- All loves, if need be, for the Love Divine.
- Friend, come thou like a friend,
- And whether bright thy face,
- Or dim with clouds we cannot comprehend,—
- We’ll hold out patient hands, each in his place,
- And trust thee to the end.
- Knowing thou leadest onwards to those spheres
- Where there are neither days nor months nor years.
