Yet, yet, the radiance is not gone, Which shed a richness o'er the scene, Which smiled upon the golden dawn, When skies were brilliant and serene; Oh! still a melancholy smile Gleams upon Nature's aspect fair, To charm the eye a little while, Ere ruin spreads his mantle there! Thou desolate and dying year! Since time entwined thy vernal wreath, How often love hath shed the tear, And knelt beside the bed of death; How many hearts that lightly sprung When joy was blooming but to die, Their finest chords by death unstrung, Have yielded life's expiring sigh, And pillowed low beneath the clay, Have ceased to melt, to breathe, to burn; The proud, the gentle, and the gay, Gathered unto the mouldering urn; While freshly flowed the frequent tear For love bereft, affection fled; For all that were our blessings here, The loved, the lost, the sainted dead! Thou desolate and dying year! The musing spirit finds in thee Lessons, impressive and serene, Of deep and stern morality; Thou teachest how the germ of youth, Which blooms in being's dawning day, Planted by nature, reared by truth, Withers like thee in dark decay. Promise of youth! fair as the form Of Heaven's benign and golden bow, Thy smiling arch begirds the storm, And sheds a light on every wo; Hope wakes for thee, and to her tongue, A tone of melody is given, As if her magic voice were strung With the empyreal fire of Heaven. And love which never can expire, Whose origin is from on high, Throws o'er thy morn a ray of fire, From the pure fountains of the sky; That ray which glows and brightens still Unchanged, eternal and divine; Where seraphs own its holy thrill, And bow before its gleaming shrine. Thou desolate and dying year! Prophetic of our final fall; Thy buds are gone, thy leaves are sear, Thy beauties shrouded in the pall; And all the garniture that shed, A brilliancy upon thy prime, Hath like a morning vision fled Unto the expanded grave of time. Time! Time! in thy triumphal flight, How all life's phantoms fleet away; The smile of hope, and young delight, Fame's meteor beam, and Fancy's ray: They fade; and on the heaving tide, Rolling its stormy waves afar, Are borne the wreck of human pride, The broken wreck of Fortune's war. There in disorder, dark and wild, Are seen the fabrics once so high; Which mortal vanity had piled As emblems of eternity! And deemed the stately piles, whose forms Frowned in their majesty sublime, Would stand unshaken by the storms That gathered round the brow of Time.