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 Much more a Muse that bears upon her Fades not or falls as fall the vernal By summer or winter charred or cloven No time casts down, no time upraises, No saving screen from frost or thunder, The imperishable and peerless flower. 325 Old thanks, old thoughts, old aspirations, Dead, but for one thing which survives — The old joy of power, the old pride of pleasure, 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 |