THE DEATH OF THE YEAR.

———

BY HENRY B. HIRST.

———

[SEE ENGRAVING.]

It was a dreary night

In the latter years of time,

When a man, with shrunken limbs

And a forehead white with rime—

With the rime of weary hours

Whose paths were not of flowers—

And a beard of snowy white,

Walked slowly through the night.

Pale Hecate, overhead,

Shone coldly on his brow;

His eye was sunken and dim,

His cheek had lost its glow,

But his step, so full of pride,—

The manhood of his stride,

Gave this antiquated thing

The appearance of a king.

The moon went sadly down

To a level with his way,

And the heavens became opprest

With vapors dark and gray

As Saturn, with his beard,

And glass, and scythe, appeared:

The old man journeyed on,

Growing weaker and more wan.

Like a shadow, on his path

With a silence, such as dwells

In the desolate dell of death

Where we hear not even our knells,

Did Saturn slowly pass

With his fatal scythe and glass:

The traveler looked not back,

But kept steadily on his track.

From the earth which lay below,

Until then so black and dumb,

Came the roar of many a gun,

With the roll of many a drum,

And the mingling strains of lute,

Clarion, cymbal, fife and flute;

And among them, like a knell,

Rose the clamor of a bell!

The wanderer heard the sound,

And with patient, suffering eyes

Gazed reproachfully on high,

Through the dark, unpitying skies;

But Saturn raised his steel

And the old man ceased to feel;

And they laid along his bier

The cadaverous Old Year.