The Closing Year Poem by Thomas Cogswell Upham

In the glad days of summer the lily and rose,
The delight of the garden, were fragrant and bright;
But their bloom and their fragrance have come to a close,
And another short year hath betaken to flight.

'Tis a few days ago, when I walked out one morn,
As the sun was just rising above the green hill;
The pear-tree was laden, the flower hid the thorn,
And sweet was the murmuring voice of the rill.

The thrush and the linnet were joyous and gay,
The lark sweetly sung from his tent in the sky,
From the hazel's retreat burst the black-bird away,
And the fields seemed in music and beauty to vie.

But now the fair landscape hath lost its delight,
The earth is all barren, the trees are all bare,
The forest indeed wears a mantle of white,
But the voices, that cheered it, no longer are there.

Wherever I look, there are signs of decay,
I hear the winds whistle unjoyous and drear,
The rills through the ice urge their desolate way,
And blighting and grief mark the death of the year.

Still the sun shall return and his lamp shall be nigh,
And the trees that are naked and torn by the blast,
Be again green as ever, and rich in his eye,
But the year of our life is the first and the last.

Our lamp shall wax dim, and our sun shall retire,
And our bodies return to the dust of their birth;
Oh, who shall rekindle that lustreless fire,
And its beauty restore to that mouldering earth?

A sun that's eternal shall burst on the tomb,
And commence a new year to the good and the wise;
His rays their dark prison shall pierce and relume,
And sprinkle with splendor their path to the skies.