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THE OLD BACHELOR'S NEW YEAR.

'Tis becoming bleak and bleaker
Every year,

And my hopes are waxing weaker
Every year;

Care I now for merry dancing,
Or for eyes with passion glancing?
Love is less and less entrancing
Every year.

O the days that I have squandered
Every year,

And the friendships rudely sundered
Every year;

Of the ties that might have twined me,
Until time to death resigned me,
My infirmities remind me

Every year.

Sad and sad to look before us

Every year,

With a heavier shadow o'er us

Every year;

To behold each blossom faded,

And to know we might have made it
An immortal garland, braided

Round the year.

Many a spectral, beckoning finger,
Year by year,

Chides me that so long I linger,

Year by year;

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Every early comrade sleeping
In the churchyard, whither, weeping,
I-alone unwept-am creeping
Year by year.

CHARLES GRAHAM HALPINE.

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THE YEAR HAS CHANGED ITS NAME.

THE year has changed its name since that last tale;
Yet nought the prisoned spring doth that avail.
Deep buried under snow the country lies;
Made dim by whirling flakes the rook still flies
Southwest before the wind; noon is as still
As midnight on the southward-looking hill,
Whose slopes have heard so many words and loud
Since on the vine the woolly buds first showed.
The raven hanging o'er the farmstead gate,
While for another death his eye doth wait,
Hears but the muffled sound of crowded byre
And winds' moan round the wall. Up in the spire
The watcher set high o'er the half-hid town
Hearkens the sound of chiming bells fall down
Below him; and so dull and dead they seem
That he might well-nigh be amidst a dream
Wherein folk hear and hear not.

WILLIAM MORRIS. The Earthly Paradise.

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THE WEAVERS-JANUARY.

TELL us, O Janus, whom with dual face The ancients imaged, as if thus to see Before, behind thee, tell us if there be Watch-fires of any kind informed with grac To melt the mists of doubt that interlace

And dim our straining vision? We wou The weaving of the new year's tapestry From unknown errors, and from every tracOf known defection. But, alas! our light

Falls only on the pattern, while the threa As though by Gobelin weavers swiftly le Shifting in color, shaded now, now brightReveals no purpose till the work is done And on the picture shines a rounded sun MRS. MARY [BARKER]

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Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o'er the groaning rocks;
He withers all in silence, and in his hand

Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.

He takes his seat upon the cliffs,

the mariner

Cries in vain. Poor little wretch, that deal'st
With storms! till heaven smiles, and the monster
Is driven yelling to his caves beneath Mount Hecla.

WILLIAM BLAKE.

WINTER.

own,

THOU hast thy beauties: sterner ones,
Than those of thy precursors; yet to thee
Belong the charms of solemn majesty
And naked grandeur. Awful is the tone
Of thy tempestuous nights, when clouds are blown
By hurrying winds across the troubled sky;
Pensive, when softer breezes faintly sigh
Through leafless boughs, with ivy overgrown.
Thou hast thy decorations too; although

Thou art austere: thy studded mantle gay
With icy brilliants, which as proudly glow
As erst Golconda's; and thy pure array
Of regal ermine, when the drifted snow

Envelopes nature; till her features seem
Like pale, but lovely ones, seen when we dream.

BERNARD BARTON.

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