Thus onward, hand in hand, to parted graves, The sundered doors into one palace home, Through age's thickets, faltering, we will go, If He who leads us, wills it so, Believing in our youth, and in the Past; Within us, tending to the last Love's radiant lamp, which burns in cave or dome; And, like the lamps that ages long have glowed In blessed graves, when once the weary load Of tomb-built years is heaved up and cast, For youth and immortality, away, Will flash abroad in open day, Clear as a star in heaven's blue-vaulted night; Shining, till then, through every wrinkled fold, With the Transfiguration's conquering might; That Youth our faces wondering shall behold, And shall be glad, not fearing to be old. THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR. The weary Old Year is dead at last; His corpse 'mid the ruins of Time is cast, Where the mouldering wrecks of lost Thought lie, And the rich-hued blossoms of Passion die To a withering grass that droops o'er his grave, The shadowy Titan's refuge cave. Strange lights from pale moony Memory lie On the weedy columns beneath its eye; And strange is the sound of the ghostlike breeze, In the lingering leaves on the skeleton trees; And strange is the sound of the falling shower, When the clouds of dead pain o'er the spirit lower; Unheard in the home he inhabiteth, The land where all lost things are gathered by Death. Alone I reclined in the closing year; Voice, nor breathing, nor step was near; And I said in the weariness of my breast: Weary Old Year, thou art going to rest; O weary Old Year, I would I might be One hour alone in thy dying with thee! Would thou wert a spirit, whose low lament Might mix with the sighs from my spirit sent; For I am weary of man and life; Weary of restless unchanging strife; Weary of change that is ever changing; Weary of thought that is ever ranging, Ever falling in efforts vain, Fluttering, upspringing from earth again, Struggling once more through the darkness to wing That hangs o'er the birthplace of everything, And choked yet again in the vapour's breast, Sinking once more to a helpless rest. I am weary of tears that scarce are dry, Ere their founts are filled as the cloud goes by; Weary of feelings where each in the throng Mocks at the rest as they crowd along; Where Pride over all, like a god on high, Sits enshrined in his self-complacency; Where Selfishness crawls, the snake-demon of ill, The least suspected where busiest still; Where all things evil and painful entwine, And all in their hate and their sorrow are mine: O weary Old Year, I would I might be One hour by thy dying, to weep with thee!