A New Year's Plaint
In words like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
--TENNYSON.
The bells that lift their yawning throats
And lolling tongues with wrangling cries
Flung up in harsh, discordant notes,
As though in anger, at the skies,--
Are filled with echoings replete,
With purest tinkles of delight--
So I would have a something sweet
Ring in the song I sing to-night.
As when a blotch of ugly guise
On some poor artist's naked floor
Becomes a picture in his eyes,
And he forgets that he is poor,--
So I look out upon the night,
That ushers in the dawning year,
And in a vacant blur of light
I see these fantasies appear.
I see a home whose windows gleam
Like facets of a mighty gem
That some poor king's distorted dream
Has fastened in his diadem.
And I behold a throng that reels
In revelry of dance and mirth,
With hearts of love beneath their heels,
And in their bosoms hearts of earth.
O Luxury, as false and grand
As in the mystic tales of old,
When genii answered man's command,
And built of nothing halls of gold!
O Banquet, bright with pallid jets,
And tropic blooms, and vases caught
In palms of naked statuettes,
Ye can not color as ye ought!
For, crouching in the storm without,
I see the figure of a child,
In little ragged roundabout,
Who stares with eyes that never smiled--
And he, in fancy can but taste
The dainties of the kingly fare,
And pick the crumbs that go to waste
Where none have learned to kneel in prayer.
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poem by James Whitcomb Riley
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