Orphan hours, the year is dead! Come and sigh, come and weep! Merry hours, smile instead, For the year is but asleep; See, it smiles as it is sleeping. Mocking your untimely weeping. As an earthquake rocks a corse In its coffin in the clay, So White Winter, that rough nurse, Rocks the death-cold year to-day; Solemn hours! wail aloud For your mother in her shroud. As the wild air stirs and sways The tree-swung cradle of a child, So the breath of these rude days Rocks the year: -- be calm and mild, Trembling hours; she will arise With new love within her eyes. January gray is here, Like a sexton by her grave; February bears the beir, March with grief doth howl and rave, And April weeps -- but, O ye hours! Follow with May's fairest flowers. |