Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][merged small]

HOLIDAYS AND HOLY DAYS.

NEW YEAR'S EVE.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. EXTRACT.

IN vain men tell us time can alter

Old loves or make old memories falter,

That with the old year the old year's life closes
The old dew still falls on the old sweet flowers,
The old sun revives the new-fledged hours,
The old summer rears the new-born roses.

Much more a Muse that bears upon her
Raiment and wreath and flower of honor,
Gathered long since and long since woven,

Fades not or falls as fall the vernal
Blossoms that bear no fruit eternal,

By summer or winter charred or cloven

No time casts down, no time upraises,
Such loves, such memories, and such praises,
As need no grace of sun or shower,

No saving screen from frost or thunder,
To tend and house around and under

The imperishable and peerless flower.

325

Old thanks, old thoughts, old aspirations,
Outlive men's lives and lives of nations,

Dead, but for one thing which survives —
The inalienable and unpriced treasure,

The old joy of power, the old pride of pleasure,
That lives in light above men's lives.

A NEW YEAR'S DREAM.

JEAN PAUL RICHTER. EXTRACT.

AN old man stood in the New Year's night at the window, and gazed with a look of despair out over the still, pure, white earth, whereupon there was none so joyless as himself. The fair days of his youth wandered about him like ghosts, and they bore him back again to that clear morning when his father first placed him at the cross-road of life.

Knowing not what he did, and with unspeakable grief, he cried out to Heaven, "Give me my youth once more, O father, place me once more upon the crossroad, that I may choose otherwise!"

But his father and his youth were long gone. He saw wandering lights dancing on the marshes, and dying out upon God's acre, and he said, "These are my sinful days!" He saw a star fly out from heaven to glimmer in its fall, and to be extinguished on the earth.

is I," said his bleeding heart.

"That

Suddenly, in the midst of this tumult, music for the New Year flowed down from the tower, like distant

« ZurückWeiter »