Poems (Toke)/The year's farewell

by Emma Toke

THE YEAR'S FAREWELL.

H! sad and solemn sounds thy voice,
 Thou old departing year!
Why ring thy tones so mournfully
 Upon the listening ear?
Full many a joyous hour was thine,
 But yet thy last farewell,
Thy footsteps' swift receding sound,
 Falls like a passing-bell.

Ay, mortal! solemn is my voice,
 And sad it seems to thee;
For still the echo of the past
 A mournful sound must be.
That tongue is mine, whose awful tone
 Each human heart must hear;
The voice within—stern conscience—speaks
 The knell of every year.

Look back upon my wasted hours
 No power can bring again:
Think, that for ever as it stands,
 My record must remain.
My darkest hours, my bitterest tears,
 May turn to smiles at last,—
But who can e'er recall again
 The sins that stain the past?

It is not happiness gone by,
 It is not bitterest woes,
That deepest shade my fleeting hours,
 Now hastening to their close.
The memories of the loved and lost
 A gentle shadow cast,—
For they, ye trust, may bless the hour
 That gave them peace at last.

But consciousness of powers misused,
 Time lost, for ever flown,
The sins of thought, and word, and deed,
 The best, alas! must own;
These form that spectre of the past,
 Which still at times will rise,
These make the hours once bright and gay,
 Now mournful in thine eyes.

Yet, ere for ever I depart,
 My last monition hear,—
Gird up thy loins, arise and live
 A life of faith and fear;
Short is the time, and great the work
 Thou must accomplish well:
No warning voice may sound again;
 Then rouse thee, and farewell.

E.

December 51, 1846.