Ode to the New Year, 1826 (1827)
ODE TO THE NEW YEAR, 1826
by James M. Nack
How many are now in the cold grave reposing
Who welcom’d the dawn of the year that has fled!
How little, alas! did they think that its closing
Should find them enshrin’d in the urn of the dead!
How many a bosom, now bounding as lightly,
Shall yield its last throb, and be motionless laid;
The spark of existence, now beaming so brightly,
Extinguished forever in sepulchral shade:
How many this year to the grave’s dark dominions
Shall hasten, who welcome its rising career,
Ere time once again on his air-feather’d pinions
Shall usher the dawn of another New-Year!
And I, who now muse on the thousands departed,
May follow them ere the return of this day,
Bedew’d with the tears of some friend brokenhearted,
Who now smiles upon me unthinking and gay;
And better than I should survive to deplore them,
The few that to share my affections remain,
O better by far I should perish before them,
Nor hail the return of a New-Year again.
The hearts that now love me, will they not regret me,
Shall ever my memory cease to be dear?
The friends of my bosom,—O can they forget me,
If swept from their sight by the close of the year?
If all I have lov’d have repaid my affections
With ardour unbounded, unfeigned as mine own,
My name, in the hearts of my friends and connexions,
Shall ever be cherish’d on memory’s throne;
But little it then will avail to me, whether
Remember’d by those I have lov’d, or forgot;
In mansions of bliss when united together,
On earth if they valued my friendship or not,
Love breathing around in the zephyrs of heaven
Shall each to the other forever endear,
Whom there our Redeemer a mansion has given
To live and to love through Eternity’s Year.