Song of the New Year by James Whitcomb Riley

I heard the bells at midnight / Ring in the dawning year; / And above the clanging chorus / Of the song, I seemed to hear / A choir of mystic voices / Flinging echoes, ringing clear, / From a band of angels winging / Through the haunted atmosphere: / "Ring out the shame and sorrow, / And the misery and sin, / That the dawning of the morrow / May in peace be ushered in."

And I thought of all the trials / The departed years had cost, / And the blooming hopes and pleasures / That are withered now and lost; / And with joy I drank the music / Stealing o'er the feeling there / As the spirit song came pealing / On the silence everywhere: / "Ring out the shame and sorrow, / And the misery and sin, / That the dawning of the morrow / May in peace be ushered in."

And I listened as a lover / To an utterance that flows / In syllables like dewdrops / From the red lips of a rose, / Till the anthem, fainter growing, / Climbing higher, chiming on / Up the rounds of happy rhyming, / Slowly vanished in the dawn: / "Ring out the shame and sorrow, / And the misery and sin, / That the dawning of the morrow / May in peace be ushered in."

Then I raised my eyes to Heaven, / And with trembling lips I pled / For a blessing for the living / And a pardon for the dead; / And like a ghost of music / Slowly whispered -- lowly sung -- / Came the echo pure and holy / In the happy angel tongue: / "Ring out the shame and sorrow, / And the misery and sin, / And the dawn of every morrow / Will in peace be ushered in. "