THE CHILD YEAR

“Dying of hunger and sorrow:

I die for my youth I fear!”

Murmured the midnight-haunting

Voice of the stricken Year.

There like a child it perished

In the stormy thoroughfare:

The snow with cruel whiteness

Had aged its flowing hair.

Ah, little Year so fruitful,

Ah, child that brought us bliss,

Must we so early lose you —

Our dear hopes end in this?

“Too young am I, too tender,

To bear earth's avalanche

Of wrong, that grinds down life-hope,

And makes my heart's-blood blanch.

“Tell him who soon shall follow

Where my tired feet have bled,

He must be older, shrewder,

Hard, cold, and selfish-bred —

“Or else like me be trampled

Under the harsh world's heel.

‘ Tis weakness to be youthful;

‘ Tis death to love and feel.”

Then saw I how the New Year

Came like a scheming man,

With icy eyes, his forehead

Wrinkled by care and plan

For trade and rule and profit.

To him the fading child

Looked up and cried, “Oh, brother!”

But died even while it smiled.

Down bent the harsh new-comer

To lift with loving arm

The wanderer mute and fallen;

And lo! his eyes were warm;

All changed he grew; the wrinkles

Vanished: he, too, looked young —

As if that lost child's spirit

Into his breast had sprung.

So are those lives not wasted,

Too frail to bear the fray.

So Years may die, yet leave us

Young hearts in a world grown gray.