Showing posts with label New Year's verse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Year's verse. Show all posts

01 January 2020

'Welcoming the New Year' by Arthur Weir



WELCOMING THE NEW YEAR 
      We gathered, a jovial party,
            Together on New Year's eve,
      To welcome the coming monarch
            And to see the old one leave. 
      We chatted around the fireside,
            And wondered what time would bring:
      We had not a tear for the parting year,
            But longed for the coming king. 
      For youth reaches ever forward,
            And drops from its eager clasp
      The realized gifts of fortune,
            Some phantom of hope to grasp. 
      Soon a maiden spoke of the custom,
            Now lapsed in this age of prose,
      To open the door for the New Year
            The instant the Old Year goes; 
      Then, leaving the door wide open,
            To stand in the silent street
      And, with a generous "welcome,"
            The entering guest to greet. 
      It suited our youthful fancy,
            And, when the glad chimes began,
      From our cosy nook by the fireside
            Down into the street we ran. 
      And, far and near, we all could hear
      The great bells ringing out the year,
            And, as they tolled, the music rolled,
            Hoarse-sounding, over town and wold. 
      "The year is dead," Gros Bourdon said,
      The clanging echoes quivering fled,
            And, far and wide, on every side,
            The bells to one another cried. 
      The mountain woke, and from its cloak
      Shook off the echoes, stroke for stroke.
            Then silence fell on hill and bell,
            And echoes ceased to sink and swell. 
      Standing beside the door wide open thrown,
      Her voice more musical than any bird's,
            And with a winning sweetness all its own,
            Our Queen thus winged her joyous thoughts with words: 
      "Ring out, bells, ring! Sing, mountain, sing!
      The king is dead, long live the king!
            Now fast, now slow; now loud, now low,
            Send out your chimes across the snow. 
      "Old Year, adieu; welcome the New,
      The door stands open here for you.
            Come in, come in, the bells begin
            To falter in their merry din." 
      Then, as the great bells ceased to swing, two broke
            A silver coin, for luck in days to come,
      And though no tender words of love they spoke,
            Yet hearts speak best when most the lips are dumb.

from Fleurs de Lys and Other Poems
Arthur Weir
Montreal: E.M. Renouf, 1884

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01 January 2018

Agnes Maule Machar's New Year's Wish (& mine)



 A NEW YEAR’S WISH 
'To know the love of Christ, that passeth knowledge.' 
               To know by surest inner sight
                    The love that ‘passeth being known’;
               To know that this, the Infinite,
                    Is yet for evermore our own: 
               As gentle as the falling dew,
                    Stronger than mightiest waves are strong,
               New, as each opening day is new
                    Old as the eternal years are long!  
               Wider than heaven’s blue above
                    The stars that most remotely shine;
               Nearer than human looks of love
                    That are but gleams of the Divine. 
               To know that love, most tender, true,
                    Closer than earthly ties most dear—
               This be the blessing ever new
                    To gladden this and every year.

A Happy New Year to all! 

Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear.

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31 December 2017

Bliss Carman's New Year's Rockin' Eve



NEW YEAR'S EVE
          The air is pulsing as with crowding wings.
          Migrant Ideals and valiant-hearted Dreams,
          The Heavenly vanguard of eternity,
          Muster to cross the frontier of new days.
          A brave unhasting company, they throng
          Out of old years with life’s immortal zest,—
          In gleaming panoply of seraphim
          Advance these dauntless heralds of all good.
          ‘Tis midnight hour. The clanging bells break forth.
          The march of man has crossed the boundary
          Into another year. Close up the ranks!
          Our ancients bid, fare on! New Year, Salute!
          The promise of the past is on your knees.
          The glory of all time is unto God.
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01 January 2017

'The New Year comes white-winged, unstained, a star...'



Century-old jingoism to begin a New Year by Minnie Henrietta Bethune Hallowell Bowen (1861-1942) of Sherbrooke, Quebec, from John W. Garvin's anthology Canadian Poems of the Great War (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1918). During the conflict, Mrs Bowen served as President of the Sherbrooke Patriotic Association.

THE NEW YEAR, 1917 A.D.

Canada's National Service

          The New Year comes white-winged, unstained, a star
               Loosed from God's hand across a world of night!
          What thoughts await its coming from afar?
               What deeds shall quicken in its unknown light?

          All Time is God's — to give and to withhold!
               To men the power is given to use or waste —
          To turn the passing splendour into gold,
               Lasting and beautiful — or bid it haste.

          Dearer than jewels — bought with holiest blood —
               Are these few months God-given to our hand
          By Him whose might held back the threatening flood
               There at the Marne, that we might arm and stand.

          The grey tide swells apace — the nations fall
               Before its pitiless, embracing lust!
          Here at the threshold of another year —
               Still with God's gift of time — we face our trust!

          The bells are ringing in the quivering towers —
               The chimes are calling over glistening snow.
          The year is dawning in its awful powers —
               The hours are coming and the hours must go!

          These few, small days may be the last that wait
               On our decision! Riven ears may know
          The iron thunders of approaching Fate
               That closes Mercy's door and arms the Foe.

          Dear blood, outpoured for love of God and Man,
               Has drenched the far-off altar with its red,
          And heavenly fire that through the trenches ran
               Has wrapped the lives that suffered in our stead.

          How can we give enough — since they have died?
               Since they have lived — shall we not greatly live
          And know in life or death with holy pride
               No wealth of service is too much to give?

          The Call to Service! ringing loud and clear
               Beats in the angel pinions overhead —
          Still time is given that deadened ears may hear
               Before the final word of doom is said.

          Work! for humanity's sublimest goal!
               Fight! in a cause too great to be denied!
          Hear! for the Dead are speaking to your soul!
               Wake! for God calls the Nation to His side!

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31 December 2016

'The year is dead, for Death slays even time...'



Verse for the day from the 1935 revised edition of Our Canadian Literature, an anthology of verse selected by the poet's friends Bliss Carman and Lorne Pierce.


A Happy New Year to all!

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01 January 2015

Decades-Old Verse for the New Year by E.J. Pratt




January the First
                          My deep resolve, this New Year's Day,
                          As written on a page of life,
                          Will be with honest heart to pray
                          The world be cleansed of hate and strife. 
                          Nor shall my resolution end
                          In empty phrases as the air –
                          The stranger shall become my friend,
                          Not less in deed than in prayer. 
                         There shall be neither east nor west,
                         Nor mountain range, nor ocean tide,
                         Where there is hunger in the breast
                         For that which my hands may provide.  
                         To human need I pledge my part
                         This New Year's Day in loyal past –
                         Lord, may the motive of my heart
                         Find no betrayal in the act.
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01 January 2014

Temperance Verse for New Year's Day


The Montreal Witness, 3 January 1894
THE PLEBISCITE VOTE IN ONTARIO, 1894

It was 1894, ere the New Year's Day was o'er,
     Noble Temperance workers gave a telling vote;
"Prohibition right away," was the watchword of the day,
     For the country's weel they knew it would promote.

          Joy! Joy! Clear the way before us,
          High, high wave the banner o'er us.
          From Atlantic's dashing roar to the far Pacific shore
          Sound the joyous Temperance triumph evermore.

While the people's voice is heard be the whole Dominion stirred,
     Deal destruction both to Licence and Saloon;
Full two hundred thousand strong join the great triumphant song,
     Oh, the better time is surely coming soon!

          Joy! Joy! Clear the way before us,
          High, high wave the banner o'er us.
          From Atlantic's dashing roar to the far Pacific shore
          Sound the joyous Temperance triumph evermore.

By the tens of thousands dead, by the tears of living shed,
     We adjure you to secure the boon we seek!
For the rulers can't refuse if you all your ballots use.
     They must harken to the people when they speak.

          Joy! Joy! Clear the way before us,
          High, high wave the banner o'er us.
          From Atlantic's dashing roar to the far Pacific shore
          Sound the joyous Temperance triumph evermore.

Grateful then to gracious Heaven for the signal victory given
     We will never cease to work and plead for more:
Strong in union, toil and pray for the dawning of the day
     When the traffic shall be swept from every shore.

          Joy! Joy! Clear the way before us,
          High, high wave the banner o'er us.
          From Atlantic's dashing roar to the far Pacific shore
          Sound the joyous Temperance triumph evermore.


Words of joy – Joy! Joy! – from Archibald McKillop, "The Blind Bard of the Megantic", inspired by the successful, though entirely ineffective, Ontario Prohibition Plebiscite of 1 January 1894.

We twenty-first century Canadians know that rulers rarely "harken to the people when they speak."

Archibald McKillop
"The Blind Bard of Megantic"
 1824 - 1905
Author of
Rhymes for the Times
Temperance Odes and Miscellaneous Poems
and
The Flood of Death; or,  The Malt that Lay in the House that Jack Built
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01 January 2012

Immature Verse for a New Year



Twenty-two lines of celebration from Poems (Beauchemin, 1922), the first volume by young Ethel Ursula Foran (1900-1988). The daughter of True Witness editor Joseph Kearney Foran, himself a poet, she subtitled her collection of "immature verses" A Few Blossoms from the Garden of My Dreams.


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01 January 2011

31 December 2009

On the Year's Last Eve



From The Poems of Archibald Lampman, published by Musson in 1900, the year after the poet's death.